TWENTIETH-CENTURY 
RURAL SCHOOL 



E. E. DAVIS 



THE ITQBBS-MERRILl, COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 

TEXAS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

0ISTR1B0T088 FOR TEXAS 
DALLAS. TEXAS 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY 
RURAL SCHOOL 



The Twentieth-Century 
Rural School 



'Je^. 



E1?EH)AVIS, M.A. 



Rural Life Specialist, Department of Extension, 

University of Texas; Editor of the Rural 

School Department of the Texas 

School Journal 



Wl 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1920 
The Bobbs-Merrill Compaky 






SEP -7 1920 

©CU597281 



PREFACE 

This little volume has been prepared for county 
school superintendents, members of county boards 
of education, progressive rural and village teachers, 
the rural-school sections of teachers' institutes, and 
for classes in rural education in the state normal 
schools. Its theme is the relation the rural school 
should bear to the life and interests of the commu- 
nity. 

I am convinced that the free school of the future 
must hinge more on the community-service idea. 
The successful teacher in the centralized rural high 
school of the twentieth century must possess the 
combined abilities of "community manager," "social 
engineer" and educator. He must be the social and 
industrial light as well as the intellectual light of the 
people he serves. 

Many teachers have left the profession in despair. 
But I am not ready to give up. I am firm in the 
behef that a new era is about to dawn. There is still 
a chance for men and women of ability and training 
who know how to make their ways among people 



PREFACE — Continued 
successfully while engaged in the teaching profes- 
sion. One of the richest opportunities for service 
and for attractive pay lies in our best rural and vil- 
lage communities. It is an opportunity overlooked 
by most of our educators. But few of our normal 
schools have ever seen it clearly. In the discussions 
that follow, I have tried to point the way to it. 

I have endeavored to make this treatise as elemen- 
tary and concrete as possible, taking most of the il- 
lustrations from rural and village schools I have 
taught and from things I have observed among 
schools taught by others. I have tried to prepare 
it from the view-point of the country teacher facing 
actual conditions at close range and not from the 
view-point of the college man interpreting rural 
data at long distance. I sincerely hope it will meet 
the need for which it is intended. E. E. D. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Some Things of Concern to the Observant 
Teacher on First Arriving in the Community 1 
The Young Man Who Never Saw the Commu- 
nity Where He Was to Teach till the Morning 
School Began — Choosing a Boarding Place — 
Getting Acquainted with the People — Identify- 
ing Gossips and Trouble-Makers — The Relig- 
ious Situation — Recreation in the Community — 
Taking Inventory of the Community's Finances 
— Taking Inventory of the People. 

II Diagnosing the Case and Applying the Remedy 23 
Most Teachers Are Poor Diagnosticians — How 
a Four-Teacher School Got a Library of Six 
Hundred Volumes — How Five Small School 
Districts Were Consolidated into One Large 
District — Great Leadership in a One-Teacher 
School — The Supreme Test of a Community 
Leader. 

III Getting the School before the People ... 43 

Painting the Old Belfry— A Beautiful Play- 
ground — A Babcock Milk Tester — The Farm 
Terracing Level — Arithmetic Instruction That 
Reaches the Home — Live-Stock Judging — 
Home Projects — The Community Fair — School- 
Improvement Day. 

IV Some Vitalizing Educational Agencies and Or- 
ganizations 62 

The Boys' School-Improvement Club — The Boy 
Scouts — Camp-Fire Girls — The Story-Teller's 
League — The Young People's Reading Circle — 
The Interscholastic League — The Parent- 
Teacher's Association — Other Vitalizing Activi- 
ties. 



CONTENTS— C(7M^mM^d 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V School Playgrounds 11 

Playgrounds and Democracy — Playgrounds and 
Juvenile Delinquency — Playing for Sport vs. 
Playing to Win the Game — Interscholastic Ath- 
letics — Teachers and Parents Not in Sympathy 
with Athletic Sports. 

VI The Social Factor in Rural Life 89 

The Country as a Victim of Inadequate Social 
and Cultural Opportunities — The Social Factor 
as a Moral Force — Beware of Moving Country 
Children to Town to Live — The Social Factor 
as a Stimulus to Cooperation. 

VII Making Better Citizens 102 

Teachers of Civics Must Get a New Point of 
View — The Half-Patriotic Citizen — Good Citi- 
zens Must Be Thrifty Citizens. 

VIII The Community Idea in Public Education . . 114 
The Public School's New Perspective — Redi- 
rected Instruction in the Common Subjects — 
The School Exists for People of All Ages — 
The New School Will Have a New Teacher — 
The New School Will Have the Moral and 
Financial Support of the People. 

IX Twentieth-Century Salaries for Twentieth- 
Century Teachers in Rural and Village Com- 
munities 126 

A Twentieth-Century Village Teacher — A 
Twentieth-Century Country Teacher — The 
Threefold Function of Rural and Village 
Schools in the Twentieth Century — The Funda- 
mental Reason for Starvation Salaries for 
Country Teachers — An Overlooked Opportunity 
— Our Conservative Institutions of Higher 
Learning — The Ultimate Remedy. 

X School Taxes in Country Districts . . . . 156 
Methods of Public Appeal — The School as a 
Business Investment for the Community — The 

\ 



CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Wealth of the Community Must Support Its 
Schools — The Inherent Fear of Taxation — Pov- 
erty a State of Mind — Farm Tenants Show 
Little Interest in School Finances — Absentee 
Landlords Object to School Taxes — A County- 
School Tax. 

XI Roads and Communication ....... 181 

A Village School That Stood for Good Roads 
— The Chronic Opponent of Public Improve- 
ments — Public Roads and Public Schools — 
Transportation of Pupils at Public Expense at 
Harrisburg, Texas. 

XII The Public School and the Health of the 

Community 193 

Country Children Are Less Healthy Than City 
Children — Small Physical Defects Prevent 
Many Children from Passing Their Grades — 
Better Food for Farm People and Farm Ani- 
mals — Teaching School Children the Benefits of 
Ventilation, Deep Breathing, and Outdoor 
Sleeping — Screens for Country Schoolhouses 
and Country Homes — Bath Tubs and Sanitary 
Outhouses for Country Homes — Lessons in 
Cleanliness. 

XIII The Rural-School Museum 214 

How the Material for a Museum Was Collected 
by a Country Teacher — The Use of the Mu- 
seum — The Essentials of a Rural-School Mu- 
seum. 

XIV A Standard School 227 

What Is a Standard School? — Score-Card for a 
Country School. 

Xy Larger School Units in the Country . . . 236 
The One-Teacher School — The Poor Atten- 
dance in Small Country Schools — The Cost of 
Small Schools — The Meaning of Consolidation 
— A Square Deal for the Country Child — How 
to Make a Consolidation. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY 
RURAL SCHOOL 



The Twentieth-Century 
Rural School 

CHAPTER I 

Some Things of Concern to the Observatstt 

Teacher on First Arriving in the 

Community 

I. The Young Man Who Never Saw the Com- 
munity Where He Was to Teach till the Morning 
School Began. — Thirty noisy children were on the 
playground when the teacher came. Half as many 
were romping in the schoolhouse. The teacher, 
now of the faculty of a prominent university in the 
South, was young and unaccustomed to respon- 
sibility. He knew little about the affairs of life. 
He knew less about child psychology and school 
management. His untrained eyes could not see 
community needs with penetration and under- 
standing. His equipment for the profession he was 
entering consisted of a brass hand bell, a box of 
crayon, and a license to practise teaching on a cer- 
tificate of inferior grade. 

At nine o'clock he rang his bell. It was the first 
time in his life he had ever rung a bell clothed with 

I 



2 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

all the authority of a pedagogue. He rang it most 
vigorously. The children came scrambling into the 
house. After they had had a few spirited scuffles 
for desirable seats, quiet ensued. Then all were 
curious to know what the teacher would do next. 
Just what that would be he himself was far from 
sure. His face was feverish with embarrassment and 
his nerves were quavering with uncertainty. Not 
knowing what else to do, he called a class. Two 
minutes later he dismissed it and called another. 
After a like period of time the second class was ex- 
cused and a third one called. By recess he had heard 
all the classes in his school five times apiece. Then, 
for the first time, it came to his disturbed mind that 
a well-planned daily program would be necessary for 
the successful conduct of the school. And while 
the children played at recess, he arranged a schedule 
of classes for the remainder of the day. Thus he 
came face to face with his first difficulty in a path 
made rugged by his meager preparation and short- 
ness of practical foresight. 

Those were great days for that young teacher, 
but hard ones on the pupils. He was getting 
experience. They were being practised on. Both 
school and community were the victims of his 
incompetency that entire half-year. He could not 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 3 

anticipate and fortify against the most obvious 
emergencies sure to arise in the course of his new 
duties. For instance, he engaged board in the 
home of a very unpopular man dishked by most of 
his neighbors. He permitted himself to be swayed 
by gossip and old prejudices brought over from 
family feuds of former years. He made every 
man and woman in the community his confidant. 
He was indiscreet in what he said and did. He 
inaugurated plays and games at school not at all 
in accord with the tastes and accepted proprieties 
of, most of the people he had come to serve. He 
took issue with all who did not believe as he did, 
often antagonizing them to the point of enmity. 
He was a poor judge of children and grown people 
alike. He was a still poorer judge of community 
interests and needs, and was pitiably helpless in his 
impractical attempts to meet them. 

This young man, uninformed and inexperienced, 
failed in most that he undertook that year. But his 
abominable failures were no more distressing than 
many made to-day by teachers of far greater aca- 
demic culture than he. True, the academic attain- 
ments of teachers in the South are deplorably lacking 
in quality and degree. But more deplorable still is 
the fact that these meager academic standards are 



4 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

about the only standards required. Personality, 
representative ability, aptitude for handling people, 
the gifts of civic and social adroitness, and ability 
to live, think and teach in terms of country life have 
been given but little v^eight in the certification of 
teachers. For that reason, I have deemed it ex- 
pedient to set forth the examples of successes, 
failures, clever devices, unusual foresight and 
advanced educational practises enumerated in this 
little volume. 

2. Choosing a Boarding Place. — A young lady 
once wrote her county superintendent thus: "As 
you know, I shall be principal of the school at Viola 
this year. Where is the best place for me to live? 
First, I would like to stay with the most influential 
family in school affairs. Second, I desire a com- 
fortable room with good table board, and other 
things considered, I would like to be as near the 
schoolhouse as possible." 

Whether a home with the most influential 
family in the community should be placed before a 
comfortable room and good table board near the 
school, is an open question. But this much is sure. 
Many teachers have come to failure by locating 
themselves with the wrong families, and many 
others have failed because of uncomfortable rooms 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 5 

and poor food, while some have wrecked their 
health from exposure on long muddy roads to and 
from school. 

Much depends on getting in the right family. 
Some families are of doubtful morals; some 
are gossip-mongers and mischief-makers; some 
are steeped in religious fanaticism; some are 
anarchistic; some are contemptuously snobbish; 
some have histories beclouded with whispered 
rumors of past misdeeds; some are misfits in the 
community; some are inexplainably unpopular. 
Unfortunate is the teacher who engages board in any 
of these homes. She makes herself a target for 
gossip, and throws wide a chasm of chilly aversion 
between herself and patrons from the very begin- 
ning. It is far better that she investigate her 
community carefully and critically before procuring 
a place to stay. If possible, she should do this 
before school opens. Where it is not possible to go 
in person, inquiries should be made through the 
county superintendent and other reliable people. 

As a rule, it is unwise for a teacher to board 
with a trustee if as good accommodations can be 
had a^^some other place. For instance, a trustee 
in a small village boarded the seven teachers of the 
public school faculty. The teachers were charged 



5 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

with pooling their influence^ with this trustee to 
dominate the poHcies of the school. The friction 
resulted in a complete change of teachers and trus- 
tees for the next year. Again, three teachers 
engaged board with a trustee. They found his 
home an undesirable place to stay and moved within 
the course of a few weeks. This incurred the ill 
will of him and his family. He retaliated by cast- 
ing the deciding vote in the school-board meeting 
dismissing the janitor and requiring the teachers 
to do the sweeping. 

3. Getting Acquainted with the People. — 
The spirit of friendliness and service is funda- 
mentally essential to the teacher's success. No 
matter how sweet-spirited and philanthropic the 
teacher may be, she can not succeed and live apart 
from the world. Altruism requires action, and 
friendliness can not thrive without exercise. It 
takes motion to make them useful. Intimate 
acquaintance and abounding sympathy with those 
with whom the teacher is to live and labor are 
indispensable to her success. Teaching school is 
no business for a recluse. 

Academic attainments unaccompanied by social 
adaptability are almost sure to make a poor teacher. 
Failure is imminent for the teacher who does not 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 7 

know and understand her constituents. Intimate 
personal acquaintance should extend to all the chil- 
dren of school age and to the parents and young 
people not in school. This relationship should be 
established early in the school year. When pos- 
sible, it should be done before the beginning of 
school. 

The teacher with foresight and practical capacity 
seizes upon every opportunity for meeting and 
knowing her patrons. Post-office, drug-store, 
church, bazaar, farmer's club, school festival, and 
every other place where people come together find 
her there with that warmth of fellowship and kindli- 
ness of spirit that compel respect and admiration 
from all. Furthermore, if her heart is of the right 
sort, she actually enjoys meeting, knowing and un- 
derstanding people from all walks and stations of 
life. She knows and understands the crude and the 
cultured, the blaze and the plain, the democrat and 
the snob, the poor and the rich, the poorly-clothed 
and the well-dressed, the modest and the bold, the 
underfed and the well-rationed, and all the rest 
that go to make up the great common tribe she has 
elected to serve. 

But not all teachers meet people with the 
same degree of ease. Some have affable dispo- 



8 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

sitions and magnetic personalities. They enjoy 
social contact. Their very attitude toward life 
compels friendliness. All who know them like 
them. Others are timid, shy, taciturn, and un- 
acquainted with the ways of the world. They have 
neither the gift nor the acquired art of moving 
among people with ease and assurance. And still 
another group is unmindful of the value of warm 
social relationships and quite indifferent to the nor- 
mal feelings and reactions of the many human souls 
about them. 

But whether the teacher be timid, naturally 
stupid, or socially alert, the need for knowing 
patrons and being known by them remains the same. 
On that account some enterprising communities 
have established a very commendable custom of 
giving a neighborhood party in honor of the 
teachers just before the beginning of school each 
year. These parties are usually held at the school- 
house, though sometimes they are held at the home 
of a trustee or at the home of some other family of 
good influence in the community. Where such 
social gatherings are not provided for by estab- 
lished practise the teacher should improvise some 
means of getting the people together just for 
acquaintance's sake. A Saturday picnic or a 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 9 

Clean-Up-and-Beautification Day may be very 
appropriately employed for getting teachers and 
patrons to meet one another in the spirit of friend- 
liness and cooperation. 

4. Identifying Gossips and Trouble-Makers. — 
Your school district may not have a community 
gossip. But it most likely does. Most com- 
munities have such human nuisances. Some of 
them are harmless though ridiculously amusing. 
Others are provocative of mischief and trouble. 
And the narrower the community's interests, the 
wider and deeper is the stream of gossip that flows 
through it. 

It is well enough for the teacher to know which 
persons are afflicted most seriously with the gos- 
siper's habit. Such information may have the 
value of an insurance policy on the teacher's official 
life, for nothing can weaken one's influence more 
surely or end one's official life more abruptly and 
ignominiously than a fetid rumor in the half- 
confidential mouth of an inveterate tale-bearer. 
The prudent teacher will know the busybodies, have 
them under constant surveillance, retain their good 
will, and keep her own conduct most discreetly forti- 
fied against their idle tongues and damaging 
curiosity. This is the surest way of living among 



10 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

them agreeably and getting along with them 
successfully. 

Some women gossips are exceedingly dangerous 
and equally as difficult to deal with. There is no 
hate so deep or revenge so unmitigating as that of 
an ill-tempered woman. Among the qualifications 
of the persons who get along with her best are 
patient forbearance, friendliness for all, and appar- 
ent unconcern for household foibles, community 
feuds, and the telltale prattle of talkative people. 
But men gossips are much easier to handle. In 
fact, the management of a trouble-making man 
gossip is not difficult at all, if he is dealt with in 
private by one who knows how to be frank and keep 
cool. 

For instance, a community had been in an 
unsettled condition for more than two years. Two 
teachers had abandoned the school in disgust. A 
young man of good personality, easy manners and 
calm nerves took charge at the beginning of the 
third year. He soon located the chief mischief- 
maker. It was no other than a man of considerable 
influence — a deacon in the church and a former 
member of the school board. He was on hand and 
made a short talk the morning school opened. He 
visited the school three times that week, two times 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL II 

the next, and twice more the week following. On 
all these visits his one subject and theme of con- 
versation was the community's past trouble. He 
was proud of his expert information in this field. 
He could recite family histories by the hour. 

But on Friday afternoon of the third week of 
school, in the sunshine on the west side of the school- 
house, while the children were on the playground at 
recess, the teacher reluctantly intimated that the 
unpleasantness of the two previous years was of 
little concern to him. Then his informant said : 
"Yes, but there are some of these people you will 
have to watch. They will bear watching. I have 
known them all these years." 

"For sure," said the young man. "I am watch- 
ing. It is my duty to watch. I would be an unworthy 
public servant if I did not watch. I am watching 
every pupil and every patron I have just as closely 
as I can. But do you know, Mr. Densmore, / am 
watching you closer than all the rest of this com- 
munity put together. Now, you are a good man 
and I like you. I think you like me. And we are 
going to continue to like each other. It's our best 
friends who tell us of our worst faults. And I tell 
you kindly. You talk too much. I did not come here 
to contract for past grievances. I came here to teach 



12 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the school this year. And if you will just cease agi- 
tating old troubles, I think I can manage things here 
on the hill." 

That school was taught to the last day and closed 
in peace. That was more than a dozen years ago. 
These two persons are still good friends and 
have been all the time. This incident that passed 
off tranquilly in private would have precipitated a 
bout or a brawl, making food for still more gossip, 
had it occurred in public. The public never did 
learn about it. The teacher did not tell it. Mr. 
Densmore could not afford to tell it. 

On coming into a strange community, teachers 
are sometimes unconsciously swayed and biased by 
reports of the incorrigibility of certain pupils, the 
uncanny manners of this family, the extreme 
unpopularity of that one, and the like. For in- 
stance, a girl of fine ability and strong determination 
had helped her mother chastise her drunken father, 
had thrashed an impudent tramp with a garden rake, 
and had told a blushing young teacher that he 
should be dismissed for incompetency. She was 
the talk of the village. The teachers for the 
ensuing year heard of her and feared her long before 
they ever saw her. She was summarily expelled 
from school by the erratic young principal on 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 3 

an unwarranted pretext at the end of the first 
week. She entered school elsewhere. Five years 
later she graduated from the college in a class with 
this very young principal who had inflicted upon 
her the injustice and disgrace of expulsion from the 
public school. 

An unverified report can easily be parent to a 
false impression. Teachers are often swayed by 
groundless rumors. In this way wrong opinions 
concerning certain pupils, families and individuals 
quite commonly lead to subsequent injustices. 
Therein consists the greatest danger of rumor. 

5. The Religious Situation. — Religious jeal- 
ousy has not yet been refined out of the hearts of 
men. Interdenominational animosities still bring 
disgrace upon the sublime concept of the Christian 
brotherhood of mankind. Envious and suspicious 
intolerance still exists among Baptists, Methodists, 
Catholics, Lutherans and Campbellites in some 
benighted localities. The old-time proselyting and 
religious debating in public, once so productive of 
bitter dissension, have just about passed away. 
But recruiting agents are still active for every con- 
gregation, and the new school-teacher seldom 
escapes their inquiries and solicitations. Indeed, 
some preachers look upon the public school as a 



14 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

fertile source for choir and Sunday-school talent 
and seek to influence the election of teachers with 
that end in view. For instance, last year I saw a 
man elected to the superintendency of the public 
schools in a town of five thousand population simply 
because his wife could sing in a certain church choir 
and the wives of the other seven applicants were not 
thus qualified. The pastor of that particular church 
controlled two votes on the school board. Just five 
months ago a new board declined to reelect that 
superintendent for the present year. 

Church ambitions and religious dissensions often 
creep into the schools of our villages and small 
towns. They occur less commonly in the country, 
though the country is by no means free from them. 
Yet where they do make their appearance in the 
country, they are usually in their most violent form. 
The bitterest religious enmity I have ever witnessed 
has been in backward rural centers. Yet, all this 
does not mean that desertion of the church is 
essential to a teacher's success. Far from it, 
even in the most intolerant community. But it 
does mean with double emphasis that the successful 
teacher in a community rent with religious dis- 
sension must be tolerant, eternally vigilant, and 
have the bigness of character and those qualities of 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 5 

resourcefulness and adroitness that enable one to 
stand out above petty squeamishness, avoid scrip- 
tural arguments, and keep aloof from church 
differences without giving offense to any one. 

6. Recreation in the Community. — Recreation 
in many country districts is in a state of chaos. 
Social desires are ignored and unprovided for. 
The social instincts run riot like weeds in an 
untenanted meadow. In six contiguous commu- 
nities in a prosperous farming district these were 
some of the answers as to how the people spent their 
Sundays: "Roaming over the country," "Visiting 
and loafing," "Wandering aimlessly about," "Sleep- 
ing and resting," "Dancing at the German Hall," 
"At church and Sunday-school." 

Wholesome, well-unified recreational activities 
lessen the difficulties of school discipline. The 
attitude of the pupils in the school-room reflects to 
a very considerable degree what takes place during 
their hours of leisure after school and on holidays. 
The adept disciplinarian will be vigilantly cognizant 
of the values or the disadvantages of every social 
resort her pupils frequent and every recreational 
function they attend. Every community, no mat- 
ter how dejected, has its social centers — ^pool hall, 
dance pavilion, barber-shop, country store, post- 



l6 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

office, cotton-gin, garage, drug-store, or street cor- 
ner — where certain gangs and groups of its popula- 
tion congregate for gregarious pastime. And these 
resorts will not escape the eye of the teacher with 
keen vision for observing human conduct. They 
will be noted and correctly evaluated in the early 
weeks of school. If the teacher be a practical 
social-welfare worker — and every rural teacher and 
rural preacher should be — she will be deeply con- 
cerned with remedial measures for their improve- 
ment and correction. 

A few years ago I was highly gratified with 
some observations in a village of six hundred people. 
The local pastor was a retired teacher, a man of 
good ability, and a natural leader of people. When 
he took the pastorate in this village, there were some 
boys' congregating centers that were breeders of 
idleness and baseness. He wished to combat them. 
He fortified the battlements of his church for that 
purpose, and a crusade of competition and peaceful 
conquest was begun against these recreational 
strongholds. One by one they fell. They could 
not withstand the wholesome competition of the new 
club rooms for boys and girls on the church prop- 
erty. And the membership of that church steadily 
increased from a few score to nearly five hundred. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 7 

Play and social inclinations are as natural as life 
itself. For the church to forbid its young people 
to engage in certain amusements without providing 
other and better recreations to take their places is a 
rebuke to the sanity of its membership and a self- 
inflicted blow at its own ultimate existence. Yet 
there are those in the ecclesiastical camps who 
would limit the functions of the church to things 
purely spiritual, just as there are those in the peda- 
gogical ranks who would limit the entire work of the 
school to things intellectual and cultural. The 
cheap commercialized show, the vaudeville, and the 
questionable amusement park continue to flourish 
because the churches and the schools do not com- 
pete with them with cleaner and more profitable 
pastime. The amusement-seeking public accepts 
them because it has no other alternative, just as a 
man lost in the woods will alleviate his thirst with 
stagnant water rather than perish. Social hunger is 
almost as impelling as the craving for food. 

7. Taking Inventory of the Community's 
Finances. — Before contracting for your school did 
you ask your trustees these questions : What is the 
local school tax rate ? What is the total amount of 
taxable wealth in the district? How much avail- 
able school revenue does it produce? 



1 8 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Finances constitute the bone, and desire for 
enlightenment makes up the muscle and nerve, of the 
school system. Without proper financial support 
the school must be left prone and helpless. The 
wide-awake teacher will look over a prospective 
location with the eyes of a business man. He will 
make an approximate inventory of the community's 
tangible assets — railroads, pipe-lines, sawmills, brick- 
yards, farms, dairies, etc. — and learn if the school 
taxes are regularly paid on all of them. He will 
know if the annual income measures up to the 
budget of a school such as he would care to teach. 
And he will not be blind to such artificially imposed 
conditions as farm tenancy and absentee land- 
lordism, so menacing to school finances in many of 
the wealthiest agricultural counties in the South. 

I know a few teachers who are fifty years ahead 
of the times. They have seen the light of a new 
day. Some of them mean to make rural education 
their life-work. They will succeed in that capacity. 
But success will come easiest and surest to those 
who use the best judgment in choosing places to 
work. The most attractive of all communities is 
that one with a homogeneous, home-owning pop- 
ulation, financially able and morally willing to 
support its free schools. These are the places that 
attract and hold the best teachers. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I9 

8. Taking Inventory of the People. — I know a 
community where the white population is composed 
of about equal numbers of Mexicans, Bohemians, 
Swedes, Germans and Americans. The human 
element in this community is all out of harmony 
with itself. The people are separated into small 
clannish groups by the barriers that the differences 
in race, language, custom and traditions have set up. 
Their ideals and interests in life constitute an 
ill-shaped, heterogeneous mass quite devoid of coher- 
ence and unity. It is poor soil for the seeds of 
public enterprise. School spirit seldom thrives in 
it. The biggest problem in a community of that 
sort is that of amalgamation and Americanization. 
The hope for its solution rests with the younger 
generation. Young men should be encouraged to 
accept places on the school board and take the lead 
in public affairs. 

In taking inventory of the human assets in any 
school district the appraiser should be keenly 
watchful for evidences of special talent and the gift 
of natural leadership. He should identify a corps 
of potential lieutenants for assisting in the conduct 
of school and community activities. And, having 
successfully identified them, no time should be lost 
in pressing them into service according to their 
respective capacities: Boy Scout Master, baseball 



20 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

captain and athletic coach, literary society president, 
secretary of the reading circle, dramatic club leader, 
music director, and the like. 

The teacher has taken a long step toward success 
when he learns how to delegate responsibility suc- 
cessfully. There are plenty of capable laymen 
who are quite willing to help the teacher carry his 
burden of responsibility when properly encouraged 
to do so. The pastor of the village church, men- 
tioned in a previous paragraph, is the school's most 
valuable human adjunct. There are those in other 
walks of life who are just as able as he, but their 
talents are lying dormant because no one has sought 
to stimulate them into activity. 

In a certain rural district I know an unassuming 
nurseryman and gardener of no mean ability. He 
is one of the best informed practical horticulturists 
of my entire acquaintance. But the school did not 
discover him until recently. Now he meets the class 
in elementary agriculture once a week and con- 
tributes his time and talent most willingly. There 
are doctors, dairymen, poultry raisers and swine 
breeders all over the country who would cooperate 
with the school just as closely as this man does if 
the teachers would only find them and enlist their 
assistance in the rigfht way. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 21 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. Is it as essential that the teacher be in the com- 
munity for a week before school begins as it is that she 
be on the school grounds for one-half hour before 
school opens each morning ? 

2. Give reasons why it is sometimes not best for a 
teacher to board in the home of a trustee. 

3. Can a person without the gift of friendliness and 
social magnetism succeed as a country school- 
teacher? Can the qualities of friendliness and 
sociability be cultivated and acquired by one not 
possessing them as native gifts? Why should the 
teacher's acquaintance extend to all the people in the 
community? Why should the teacher know and 
understand people from the humblest to the most 
exalted stations of life? Some people with magnan- 
imous hearts and deep sympathies have true affections 
for the whole of mankind. Others are apparently 
friendly and sympathetic, but at heart are altogether 
insincere. To which class do you belong? Are you 
really democratic, or do you merely pose as a demo- 
crat? Name some values that studying people at first 
hand and living sympathetically among them have over 
reading books about them. 

4. Why is a community with narrow interests so 
likely to be contaminated with poisonous gossip ? Why 
is gossip more intense in small towns than in large 
cities ? It has been said that persons of education and 
culture are less given to gossip than the poorly 
informed, because small and worthless thoughts arc 
crowded out of their minds with larger useful ones. 
To which of these clae«©s do yoti b©biig? 



22 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

5. Were you elected to your present position 
because you are a Baptist or a Methodist, or because 
you are a capable teacher? Is there social and 
religious harmony in your community? 

6. Is there any form of organized social recreation 
for the young people where you are to teach this year ? 
Where is the community's social center ? Do the boys 
meet at barber-shops, pool halls, or other places for 
conversational intercourse and passive amusement? 
Do the young people go away to town for their 
amusement? If so, why? 

7. Of what does the taxable property consist in the 
district where you are to teach this year: farms, live 
stock, railroads, pipe-lines, etc.? What is the total 
property value of the district? What per cent, of the 
people own their homes ? What per cent, are tenants '^. 
Are there any absentee landlords? Are they active 
friends of public education? 

8. What is the predominant nationality of the 
people in your school district? Do they all speak the 
English language? Are they socially homogeneous? 
Is there any one local interest — club, church or busi- 
ness organization^ — in which the majority of them take 
an active part? 



CHAPTER II 
Diagnosing the Case and Applying the Remedy 

I. Most Teachers Are Poor Diagnosticians — 

The doctor ascertains the nature of the patient's 
malady before prescribing a remedy. He feels the 
pulse, takes the temperature, notes the complexion 
and then decides upon the treatment. He treats 
each case according to its needs. The remedy for 
smallpox will not cure tonsilitis. The curative arts 
must fail in their usefulness when improperly 
applied. There are many doctors and teachers 
familiar with numerous valuable remedies they can 
not put into successful practise. They are failures 
in their professions because they can not make a 
correct diagnosis. 

Rural and village teachers are especially weak 
in the art of diagnosing community affairs. It is a 
thing they have never been taught to do. Until 
quite recently our normal schools and colleges have 
never taken the question of community leadership 
very seriously. Even now, rural-life courses are by 
no means receiving the support they should. 

Too many teachers gaze upon community prob- 
lems and never see them. They can not interpret 

23 



24 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the social data spread out before their eyes. The 
four walls of the school-room mark the limits of 
their vision. Indeed, it did not dawn upon the 
present writer for five long years after he had taught 
his first country school that he had overlooked two 
very definite community problems that he should 
have seen and have solved. He failed to diagnose 
the case committed to his care. Worse still, he did 
not even discover that the patient was sick. 

The diagnosis of a case of measles is no difficult 
matter. The symptoms are easy to detect. The 
examination is purely physical. But the case of a 
sick community is much more complex. It is both 
physical and psychical. The traditions, lan- 
guage, feelings and sensibilities of the people must 
be taken into account along with the community's 
physical needs. I sometimes think that there are no 
people on earth so sensitive as country people. And 
as a rule, the farther removed they are from the 
centers of culture, the more sensitive you find them. 
Yet, when properly understood and properly ap- 
proached, there are no people more responsive to 
capable leadership than country people. 

Just here I wish to cite some instances where 
rural teachers have shown marked ability as com- 
munity leaders: 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 25 

2. How a Four-Teacher School Got a Library 
of Six Hundred Volumes. — Five years ago a young 
man with a commanding personality, an abundance 
of common sense and a twentieth-century concep- 
tion of the function of a free school in a country 
district was employed as principal of a rural school. 
Three women teachers were employed to assist him. 
School opened on the first Monday in October, and 
the first three weeks passed quietly. On the third 
Friday afternoon the four teachers remained after 
school for a faculty conference. The social status 
of the community and the needs of the school were 
discussed at length. A program of school improve- 
ment for the year was decided upon. A new library 
for the school was included in this program. 

But the program of improvement decided upon 
in this small faculty meeting was not given house- 
top publicity. Sometimes publicity is a great 
stimulus to community action and a legitimate 
instrument for the teacher to use in promoting 
educational enthusiasm. But in other instances it will 
defeat the very ends it is intended to promote. In 
this particular instance, the teachers thought best 
to conduct the campaign quietly and diplomatically. 
So they very tactfully set about educating their 
pupils and patrons to want better things in the way 



26 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

of school equipment. But the new Hbrary was not 
mentioned, neither were the playground apparatus 
and the equipment for the laboratories. 

The next week the pupils in school were required 
to write their parents urgent invitations to come to 
the schoolhouse the following Friday night. Just 
why they should be invited to the schoolhouse at 
that time was kept in mystery. The very mystery of 
the scheme caused the people to come. More than 
three hundred people were present. The teachers 
had quietly and secretly prepared for their reception 
and entertainment. The children below twelve years 
of age were received by one of the women teachers 
and the secretary of the mothers' club. The children 
from twelve to sixteen years old were entertained 
by a committee appointed for that purpose. The 
grown young people of the school and community 
were the guests of the principal of the school. The 
parents were provided for by the local pastor and 
the county farm demonstrator. 

After more than an hour of merriment, instruc- 
tion and entertainment, these sectional meetings 
adjourned and all the people came together in the 
auditorium. Some light refreshments were served 
and all had an informal good time together for 
another hour. Then the meeting was adjourned 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 2/ 

and the people went home. But that was not all. 
The after effects still lingered in their nerves. 
Deep down in its heart that community felt better 
at the close of this meeting than it had ever felt in 
its previous history. That was the first step toward 
the new library and improved playground. 

The meeting had the desired effect. A week 
later the community was asking that it be repeated. 
A second meeting was held two weeks from the 
time of the first one. But the program of school 
improvement that the teachers had in mind was not 
mentioned on either occasion. 

A third meeting was held. At the third meet- 
ing, in the young peoples' section, the seeds were 
sown that ultimately germinated and matured into 
the Hbrary. It was done in this manner: At the 
proper time the principal said, "How many present 
would like to meet here regularly on the second and 
the fourth Friday nights of each month in the 
capacity of a young people's reading circle?" The 
suggestion was readily accepted by all. Then he 
assigned Tennyson's ''Locksley Hall" for the first 
reading lesson. He told me that he assigned 
"Locksley Hall" because he did not think there was 
a single copy of Tennyson's poems in the community. 

It was further agreed in a most cheerful manner 



28 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

that all who failed to read the assignment by the 
time of the next meeting should be assessed a fine 
of one dollar to be paid into the treasury of the 
society for the purchase of new books. Much to 
the surprise of the principal, two copies of Tenny- 
son's poems were found in the community. But 
when the time for the meeting came, twenty-three 
of the twenty-nine young people present had not 
read the assignment. Twenty-three dollars were 
promptly and cheerfully contributed in penalties, and 
that amount was supplemented by a general contri- 
bution of twelve more dollars, making a total of 
thirty-five dollars. The following week the club 
was presented with a complete set of O. Henry's 
books, and three months later the campaign was 
formally launched for a fund to provide a Hbrary to 
meet the needs of that school and community. 

The incidents leading up to the final consum- 
mation of this library plan are too numerous to re- 
late. I shall mention only one of them. 

The principal said : ''The greatest obstacle in the 
path leading to the installation of the library^ was our 
mothers' club. The mothers' club, though a useful 
and an almost indispensable organization in a school 
community, sometimes becomes a clog in the 
machinery of school affairs if it is not managed very 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 29 

carefully. But don't you know, it is the easiest 
thing in the world to manage if you go at it in the 
right way. I handle my mothers' ckib just as I 
handle a bad boy. Assign the mothers some defi- 
nite piece of work to do, and you have the difficulty 
solved. So I knew the mothers would want to 
assist in procuring the library. But I thought my 
teachers and I could install a better library for this 
school and community without their assistance than 
with it. So, while we were quietly, patiently and 
tactfully educating' these young people to want 
more books and better books to read, the mothers 
were doing something else. They were kept busy 
installing the seesaws, swings, giant strides, hurdles 
and tennis courts you see on our playgrounds." 

3. How Five Small School Districts Were 
Consolidated Into One Large District. — Three 
years ago a young man, just out of college, con- 
tracted to teach a two-teacher school in the extreme 
south end of a certain Texas county. A natural 
geographic unit in that part of the county was 
divided into five small school districts. In a private 
interview with the county superintendent three 
weeks after school began this young man proposed 
a plan for the consolidation of these five districts. 
'Tt will never do; it is impossible; those people are 



30 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

all cross with one another; the very attempt will 
mean your undoing," said the superintendent. But 
the young man was persistent in his belief that the 
idea was feasible and practicable, and he had perfect 
confidence in his ability to see it through to a suc- 
cessful finish. He said : "Just turn the whole thing 
over to me. I think I can handle it." He was 
anxious for the responsibility, and the county super- 
intendent, who was equally well pleased to be re- 
lieved of it, gave his consent. 

The first thing the young principal did was to 
make a complete inventory of everything in the lo- 
cality: the people who owned their homes; those 
who were tenents; those who had telephones and 
rural free delivery of mail; the number of horses, 
mules, hogs, sheep and cattle in the community; the 
status of the churches and the condition of the coun- 
try roads ; the chief social interests of the young peo- 
ple; and a great many other things. In truth, he 
soon knew more about the community than any 
other man residing in it. He became thoroughly 
familiar with the industrial, social, religious and 
educational standards of the people with whom he 
had cast his lot as teacher and community-builder. 

Among other things, he discovered a group of 
young men who liked to sing. He also hked to 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 3 1 

sing. For three years he was a member of a small 
college glee club before coming to that place. One 
evening he invited seven of these boys to come over 
and be his guests after supper. For more than two 
hours they stood in a group around the piano and 
sang. They learned a number of simple old college 
songs that were perfectly new in that community. 
From that time on they met regularly and practised 
singing two nights each week. In the course of 
three months of intensive training this teacher had 
evolved the best male quartette ever heard in that 
part of the country. They were singing regularly 
for the two churches and had given one concert at 
the schoolhouse that was well received by all the 
people. In short, the teacher had won the confi- 
dence of the school patrons and the unanimous 
support of the young people he sought to lead. 

His next endeavor was to do some local exten- 
sion work. A concert was given at the schoolhouse 
in an adjacent district one Friday night. The same 
program was rendered at the other three of the five 
schools in question on each of the three following 
Friday nights. The boys were improving in their 
singing all the while, and they were giving the best 
program that many of those people had ever heard. 
It proved so popular that the people asked that 



32 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

it be repeated. It was repeated. All this covered 
a period of nine successive Friday nights. But it 
was worth the time and effort. It was part of 
the deep-seated scheme and program of educational 
propaganda that this ingenious young man had con- 
ceived for uniting the people and consolidating these 
five small schools into one larger and more efficient 
educational unit. 

He then went to the county-seat town and con- 
fided his plan to the pastor of the Methodist church. 
This pastor was a very fluent speaker, a delightful 
entertainer, and had spent several years of his Hfe 
as the superintendent of schools in a town of four 
thousand population. He agreed to come out on 
five successive Friday nights in regular lyceum 
fashion and give five lectures at these five school- 
houses. The five lectures were delivered and 
highly appreciated by all who heard them. The 
central theme was the Twentieth-Century Rural 
School. But the idea of consolidating the schools 
in that locality was most assiduously avoided at all 
these meetings. 

After this lecture program, extending over five 
weeks, the teacher procured a stereopticon and a set 
of fifty-two rural-school slides. Then he went 
before these people again, and in a visual way showed 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 33 

them some of the bigger, better, more modern 
things in rural education. Improved playgrounds, 
modern buildings, social centers, libraries, labora- 
tories for rural schools, and the conveyance of pupils 
at public expense were some of the subjects brought 
to their attention. 

At the end of nine months of tactful, judicious 
education, these people were demanding for them- 
selves the very things this young teacher had in 
mind when he went among them. They were 
desirous of a school with a greater aggregation of 
pupils, more teachers, and better equipment. To 
all effects, the vast majority of them were asking 
for consolidation, though consolidation as such had 
not been broached to them one time. 

This young teacher knew how to reckon with 
practical affairs. He knew how to estimate the 
ideals and temperament of his constituents and how 
to apply remedial measures to his community's needs. 
He was something more than a pedantic, academic 
instructor in the class-room. He was a fisher of 
men and a leader of people. 

4. Great Leadership in a One-Teacher School. 
— One Tuesday afternoon, slightly more than two 
years ago, in a one-teacher school, fourteen miles 
from the railroad, I heard Alma Gluck sing and 



34 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Woodrow Wilson talk to more than twenty country 
children below the eighth grade. Fritz Kreisler 
was there with his violin, and Victor Herbert gave 
a concert. The Victrola had brought the popular 
artists of the world together to delight and instruct 
those children. It was giving them a taste for 
higher culture and many of the best things in life. 

The Victrola, library, physiology charts, pri- 
mary reading charts, a cabinet of maps, some 
attractive school-room pictures, and a museum con- 
stituted the interior equipment of this magnificent 
little school. It was indeed a worthy home and a 
most amiable school center for the fortunate children 
in attendance. 

The agent responsible for this delightful school 
was a little blonde girl weighing about one hundred 
and ten pounds in the person of the teacher. All 
this equipment had been provided and the school 
tax raised from zero to fifty cents on the one hun- 
dred dollars during her three years of residence 
with tliose people. Each step in the making of that 
school has an interesting history. The stories of 
the Victrola and the tax election are especially 
illuminating. The account of the tax election runs 
about as follows : 

The largest property holder in the district had 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 35 

always been opposed to a school tax. He had 
fought and defeated two local tax campaigns in the 
district during the years gone by. On numerous 
occasions he had threatened to make his tenants 
move and to raise the rent on them if they voted 
for a school tax. In short, the one almost insur- 
mountable hindrance in the school's pathway was 
this man. He had denied almost two generations 
of children in that district the rights of a standard 
free-school education. He was cold-blooded, 
uncompromising, and overbearing. Most of his 
neighbors disliked him and feared him. 

The teacher spent the first year of her tenure 
in that community studying this man. She spent 
the second year cultivating his acquaintance, getting 
into his confidence and exploiting his weak points. 
By the third year she knew him far better than he 
knew himself. She had made herself his mistress, 
though he was quite unaware of it. He would take 
orders from her and obey them like a school child. 
He never offered her one word of protest. 

He volunteered to purchase ten new Victrola 
records for the school if the teacher would select 
them. He sent two teams that worked all day when 
the school grounds were being leveled. He helped 
repaint the schoolhouse. On one occasion he took 



36 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the teacher and the pupils in his two cars for an 
all-day picnic. He often called at the school to see 
what was needed. In two years he had uncon- 
sciously become a good school patron. At the 
solicitation of the teacher he had permitted his 
name to be placed on the ticket for school trustee. 
He was elected and made chairman of the school 
board. 

The time had come to launch the school-tax cam- 
paign. The teacher had procured the necessary 
legal forms for the petition for the election. Every- 
thing was ready. The spirit of the community was 
fine. All the patrons were giving the school the 
full support of their moral influence. It was evi- 
dent that the election would be easy to carry if the 
arch-enemy of school taxes did rise up in his wrath 
and smite it. 

Up to this time the school-tax campaign was 
secret to all but the teacher. For several days the 
children had been making banners. They knew that 
an educational parade of some sort was being 
planned. But they had no conception of its nature 
or what it portended for the future. 

On Saturday morning five automobiles were 
decorated in gala attire with banners, bunting, 
streamers and placards. With about thirty hilar- 
ious school children and young people, a round of 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 37 

the community was begun at ten o'clock. They 
characterized themselves as ''educational boosters." 
The teacher and the three trustees were in the car 
leading the pageant. Six other cars were in line 
with the five decorated ones. 

The first stop was at the little village center of 
the community consisting of a general merchandise 
store, a drug-store and a blacksmith shop. Stand- 
ing on the high porch in front of the drug-store, the 
teacher talked for ten minutes to the people as- 
sembled. She laid particular stress on the financial 
needs of the school. Then she presented the peti- 
tion for the tax election. She procured nine 
signatures from the laymen present. Then she 
presented it to the three members of the school 
board for them to sign on the three blank spaces 
reserved for them at the top of the list. Without 
hesitation or objection they promptly added their 
three signatures to the list already signed. In a 
few more hours twenty signatures, the number 
necessar}^ to call the election, were procured. Be- 
fore night the county judge was consulted, the 
election ordered and the election notices were offi- 
cially posted on the schoolhouse door. When the 
election day came, there was not a dissenting vote 
cast against the tax. 

This teacher had won a victory. She had silenced 



38 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the most formidable redoubt threatening pubHc 
education in that community without having to 
assault it. She had vanquished an enemy without 
having to conquer or defeat him. She had taken 
him alive and led him into captivity, and he was 
satisfied with his lot. Shrewdness and diplomacy 
were her conquering weapons. 

Molding the attitude of an individual is very 
much like molding public sentiment in a com- 
munity. Some dominant interest must be hit upon 
as a point of departure to work out from to other 
things. This man was a great lover of music. 
When the teacher installed the Victrola and some 
high-class records in the school, she enlisted one of 
his most available interests. She was quick to 
exploit the advantage thus gained. Her desire was 
for an unconscious expansion of his interests to 
other things. This she accomplished. In two 
years his most obstinate protests against the school 
were changed to words and deeds of support. 

5. The Supreme Test of a Community Leader. 
—It takes an artist in human affairs to know how 
to identify and attack rural community problems 
successfully. With the problem unmistakably 
identified, the next question is the method of 
approach to its solution. Herein lies the supreme 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 39 

test of the teacher as a practical leader of people. 
For every problem there are numerous methods of 
attack. There is the first best method, the second 
best method, and the fortieth best method. Some 
teachers possess the shrewdness and keenness of 
insight to detect the very best and the most practical 
of all the avenues, of approach to each problem that 
arises. Other teachers fail because they begin at 
the wrong place, in the wrong way, and at the 
inopportune time. They err in their diagnosis and 
use poor judgment in the methods of administering 
the treatment they undertake. 

The young man who installed the library, pre- 
viously mentioned, possessed the genius of true 
leadership. He knew how to begin and where to 
begin a practical campaign for community uplift. 
I have thought over the case of that community many 
times. Of all the positions from which he might 
have launched his campaign for more books and 
healthy reading habits, I can not think of one half 
so strategic and appropriate as the one he chose. 
At that particular time and place the minds of that 
receptive body of young people constituted the logi- 
cal point of departure. He saw it and made use of 
the opportunity. He detected a community need 
and met it in a simple, practical way. 



40 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

We need more teachers who are capable of being 
men and women among other men and women. 
Too few of our present generation of teachers know 
how to make their ways successfully into the ranks 
of people. They break down at the point of social 
contact. They lack social aggressiveness. For 
that reason, they do not have a competent under- 
standing of grown people. Such knowledge is not 
acquired through the dogmas, formulae and academic 
tests of the teaching profession. Teachers with only 
academic training can never be successful leaders 
of people and constructive directors of group 
activities. 

The men and women of the hour in the teaching 
profession must have a practical knowledge of 
people. They must also be capable of seeing com- 
munity problems and handling them. I trust that 
the three instances of leadership cited in this chap- 
ter may cause other teachers to look more 
searchingly into the tasks and opportunities set 
before them. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

I. The doctor always diagnoses the patient's case 
very carefully before issuing a prescription. Why 
should the teacher follow the same practise in meeting 
the practical difficulties of school administration? 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 4I 

Which is the more difficult patient to diagnose, a sick 
person or a sick community? What are the most 
serious ailments affecting the community where you 
are to teach this year ? Are you trying to correct any 
of them? 

2. Suggest three methods of initiating a library 
campaign similar to the one mentioned in this chapter. 
Have you ever known of a teacher's failing to get a 
school tax voted, or to put new books in the library, 
or to buy a Victrola or other school equipment, 
simply because she did not start right? 

A teacher once said, "I enlisted the assistance of my 
mothers' club. in raising money for the library, but I 
did not invite it to help select the books after the 
money was raised." Did he act wisely? Does your 
mothers' club interfere with the internal affairs of your 
school? If so, whose fault is it? Would this inter- 
ference have been averted if you had directed its 
interests to the allied activities of the school such as 
playgrounds, pictures for the school-rooms, sanitary 
drinking fountains, etc.? Do questions of discipline, 
class management, and methods of instruction fall 
within the province of the mothers' club? 

3. Suggest three other ways by which the campaign 
for consolidating the five school districts mentioned in 
this chapter might have been successfully inaugurated. 
Would this consolidation have been possible without 
the seven months of skilful education this young man 
gave the people in those five districts? Will people 
have better schools when they want better schools and 
know what better schools look like? 

4. Do you have an obstinate patron opposed to 



42 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

school taxes? What are some of the things that 
interest him most? Could he be converted by some 
method similar to the one employed by the young 
woman teacher mentioned in this chapter? 



CHAPTER III 
Getting the School before the People 

The commercial world knows the value of adver- 
tising and knows equally well how to advertise. 
The psychology of advertising has become a fine 
art. A practical advertisement attracts attention, 
holds attention, and creates a desire for the thing 
advertised. To attract attention it must be dis- 
played in a public place. The bill-board and the 
electric sign are never put in the back alley. To 
hold attention and fix itself permanently in memory, 
the advertisement must be made impressive and 
repeated as often as possible. To create a desire 
in the mind of the customer or patron, the thing 
advertised must be shown to have the power of 
satisfying some physical, social or cultural want. 

Educators, as a rule, are not practical publicity 
agents. The art of school advertising has not been 
studied very seriously by most of them. It is a 
subtle and difficult art requiring much more skill 
than the displaying of things to eat and wear. 
Blatant educational advertising would cause adverse 
criticism and defeat its very purpose. The dignity 
of the school must be preserved at all times. Yet, 

43 



44 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

publicity of the right sort is as legitimate for the 
school, library and playground as for the corner 
grocery store. The teacher should vitalize the 
school and let the people know there is a school 
in the community. There are many devices by 
which this can be done. 

The following are some of the devices I have 
seen put to practical use in calling public attention 
to the school and in popularizing the school with 
the pupils and patrons. I trust that they may be of 
use to other teachers. 

I. Painting the Old Belfry. — Twelve years ago, 
in the Western Cross-Timbers of Texas, the value 
of local school publicity was accidentally brought 
home to a young teacher in the following spec- 
tacular way. The belfry on top of the old stone 
building where three teachers were to have charge 
during the ensuing year was in a bad state of repair. 
The principal came to the community a week before 
school opened. He could not endure the thought of 
having to look at the painfully dilapidated old belfry 
every day during the entire session of eight months. 
On Thursday morning of that week he repaired and 
painted it. On Friday afternoon he gave it a 
second coat of white paint. On Saturday morning 
he went with the local doctor as he made his calls 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 45 

in the community and discovered that the newly 
painted belfry on the old schoolhouse on the hill 
could be distinctly seen in every direction for a 
radius of five miles. It stood out white and con- 
spicuous in the autumn sun. It had attracted 
attention and occasioned inquiry from most of the 
residents in the district. 

At church on Sunday morning, before services 
began and while the people were assembling, the 
pastor, a friend and former acquaintance of the new 
teacher, grasped his hand and said: ''Allow me to 
congratulate you, young man. You are an artist, 
a psychologist and a diplomat. You are a good 
advertiser. You have hung your sign up good and 
high, and all the people in the community know the 
new teacher has come." 

The young man falteringly acknowledged the 
comphment with a stammering ''Thank you." Until 
that moment the thought of public display had not 
occurred to him. But he got the cue to a new idea 
that he has acted upon to great advantage many 
times since. It is this. In education, as in business, 
it pays to advertise. And experience has since 
taught him that the more remote the district and 
the narrower the interests of its people, the simpler 
are the methods that may be used. 



46 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

2. A Beautiful Playground. — In an East-Texas 
village of less than five hundred population there is 
a beautiful school playground. The lawn is large 
and looks like the lawn in front of a well-kept city 
home. This playground is the one outstanding 
attraction of the community. All the play appara- 
tus is painted white and stands out in ornamental 
relief against the green landscape. The ground is 
encircled by a race course twenty feet wide and 
more than half a mile in circumference. This 
playground is put to intensive use during the school 
months and is by no means idle during vacation. 
It is a veritable joy- spot in the life of the community. 

When I last visited that place, the swings and see- 
saws had just been painted white. There was also 
a long line of white hurdles, and the basketball goal 
posts were whitewashed to the tops. I asked the 
principal why he had painted all his playground 
equipment white. His answer was, "So people can 
see it." 

This man had designed his playground to attract 
and compel the attention of every passer-by. Every 
piece of equipment was displayed to the very best 
advantage. The hurdles, swings and giant strides 
were given conspicuous places, and the tennis courts 
had been moved from the back side of the campus 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 47 

over next to the public road, where they could be 
seen to better advantage by the passing public. 

School spirit in that community is all that could 
be desired. The educational esprit de corps among 
the pupils, patrons and laymen could not be better. 
The biggest thing in the community is the school. 
The eyes of all the people are on it. The play- 
ground is only one of the many devices that have 
been used in keeping this school before the people 
and giving it popularity. The principal knows how 
to advertise the cause of education in a practical 
way. He knows the kind of advertising to use in 
that particular community. 

3. A Babcock Milk Tester. — A few years ago 
a North-Texas county superintendent took me to 
what he said was the best-regulated and best-taught 
school under his supervision. On our arrival at the 
schoolhouse that morning the unusually large per- 
centage of grown young people in attendance 
immediately told me there were things out of the 
ordinary happening at that school. The distin- 
guishing feature of this school was the close 
articulation of its work in the higher grades with 
the interests of the homes and the farms in the 
community. 

In a small laboratory that had been improvised. 



48 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

for the most part by the teacher and the boys, a 
fifteen-year-old boy was working with a Babcock 
milk tester. He said to the county superintendent : 
"The seniors tested part of the cows before Christ- 
mas, and the ninth grade is testing the rest of them 
now. They found several boarders before Christ- 
mas, and we found another one yesterday. You 
know, a boarder cow is one that does not produce 
enough butter-fat to pay for the feed she eats. She 
just boards around with the rest of the cows." 

The Babcock tester was only one of the agencies 
this school had adopted for making itself a dynamic 
force for good to every home and every farm in 
that school district. This was a school conducted 
in simple terms of usefulness that all could see and 
understand. The people felt that it was their 
servant and the community's best friend, and they 
stood ready to support and defend it at all times. 

4. The Farm Terracing Level. — A farm ter- 
racing level costs about fifteen dollars. This instru- 
ment is beginning to win popularity as a piece of 
rural-school laboratory equipment. Thousands of 
farms are being washed away and damaged by 
heavy rains. Scientific terracing is the only rem- 
edy that will save them. Therein lies a great 
opportunity for the alert teacher ready to come to 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 49 

the economic rescue of his school patrons. It is not 
only an opportunity for meritorious service, but it 
is an invaluable opportunity for establishing a 
sympathetic connection between the school and 
many indifferent patrons otherwise difficult to 
reach. It is the kind of service that wins the con- 
fidence of the average country man and increases his 
respect for the school and the teacher. 

The school terracing level should see service on 
all the farms of the community where it is needed. 
It should be a piece of community-owned property 
put to intensive, practical use, and not a curio treas- 
ured behind the doors of a locked cabinet at the 
schoolhouse. The farmers and their sons will do 
the work, if the teacher will only take the initiative 
and show them the way. 

Recently at a teachers' institute one teacher 
remarked to some others talking in a group at inter- 
mission: "The terracing level helped me put the 
school on the map out at my place. It was one of 
our big trump cards in the game of education out 
there last year." A few days later it was my good 
fortune to be in that man's school. The older 
pupils went out into a neighboring field and made 
the survey for a terrace as I directed. The confi- 
dence and alacrity with which they handled the tri- 



50 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

pod, level, tape line and elevation rod and target 
were sufficient to demonstrate that they knew very 
well what they were about. The survey was de- 
veloped and stakes were driven into the ground 
marking its path for a distance of more than two 
hundred yards on that old red-clay hillside badly 
butchered with gullies. It was not a piece of hap- 
hazard guesswork; it was a piece of scientific 
accuracy taught through the agency of a school that 
was intelligently going about the practical solution of 
a few economic problems in an agricultural district. 
An East-Texas county superintendent recently 
said: "The county farm demonstrator and I have 
been seriously contemplating a campaign for a ter- 
racing level, Babcock milk tester, spraying appara- 
tus, and possibly a compound microscope for each 
of about fifteen of the best schools in this county. 
Our farms need terracing; dairying should be 
encouraged; we have to fight insect pests and fun- 
gous diseases in our orchards and gardens with 
spraying mixtures; and if the children could look 
through the microscope down into the world of 
diatoms occasionally, I think it would be of great 
value to them in the intelligent understanding and 
application of many of the laws of health and sani- 
tation back at home. And besides that, these very 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 5 1 

instruments of education would be of immense 
strategic importance in giving the schools prom- 
inence and in helping them to enHst the interests of 
many patrons now indifferent to the cause of 
education." 

5. Arithmetic Instruction That Reaches the 
Home. — When asked what text was being used in 
arithmetic, a teacher replied, "None." He meant 
this statement for the upper grades only, and it was 
almost literally true, though the adopted text was 
used to some extent as a sort of reference book. 
The boys had been required to take tape lines and 
make measurements of every silo, wheat bin, corn 
bin and cistern in the school district, and compute 
their respective capacities in tons, bushels and gal- 
lons. They had been taught the use of the 
carpenter's square and could cut a rafter of any 
desired pitch, run a simple stairway, make a miter- 
box, and do a great many other practical things. 
They knew how to make a simple drawing to any 
desired scale. They could make out a bill for the 
lumber in a garage, a small barn, or a simple farm- 
house. They had learned the use of fractions and 
percentage in making up balanced rations for dairy 
cows, flocks of laying hens, and other exercises 
taken from the industries of the community. 



52 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Then I thought of another school, somewhere in 
Texas, where the pupils knew the printed rules, the 
formulae and the examples of the text, but were help- 
less in the practical applications of them. They 
could make a good grade on a written examination, 
but they could not keep an accurate set of farm 
accounts, and were nonplused when given a prob- 
lem not taken from the books they had studied. 
Realizing the extreme artificiality of this school, 
one of the patrons with a clear conception of the 
kind of education that educates for practical use- 
fulness, paid it a visit and gave some tests one day. 
He took twenty-three new neckties and a sample of 
cotton with him when he went to the school. 
There were just twenty-three boys and girls in the 
ninth and tenth grades. He took the neckties to 
offer as prizes for the correct solution of a simple 
problem taken from his business that morning. He 
held up the white sample of cotton in his right hand 
and said : "This sample is taken from the big bale 
you see just across the road by the scales. I bought 
that bale this morning. It is classed as strict mid- 
dling. The quotation for strict middling to-day is 
12.875 cents per pound. The man I bought this cot- 
ton from had a small account down at my store. 
Now, I want you pupils to go over in a body and 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 53 

get the weight of that bale from the weigh tmaster ; 
then go down to the store and get an itemized 
statement of this man's account from the book- 
keeper, and tell me what was the balance due him 
on his cotton. No pupil is to assist another in the 
calculations made." 

Thirty minutes later the twenty-three pupils 
returned with the necessary data. They were all 
puzzled and some of them dumfounded. They had 
never had an example presented in that way in their 
lives. They knew arithmetic and knew it very well, 
too. But the arithmetic they knew was inevitably 
glued to the printed pages they had studied. They 
could not dissociate it from the book and turn it to 
practical use. Only two neckties were awarded as 
prizes for success. Twenty-one persons failed to 
solve the simple problem, and twenty-one neckties 
were returned to their places in the showcase in 
the village store. 

Here we have two types of schools. One is real, 
the other artificial; one is born of present-day 
needs, the other a decrepit creature of tradition; 
one is a beacon light of usefulness in the community, 
the other a silent partner in the community's affairs ; 
one is productive of healthy school spirit, the other 
a breeder of educational apathy ; one is seen and felt 
for good, the other is obscure and unappreciated. 



54 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

6. Live-Stock Judging.— Three years ago I 
received a picture of a beautiful Hereford animal 
with a group of schoolboys standing in a semicircle 
about him. Each boy had a score-card in his hand 
and was making notations of all the strong and 
weak points of this animal. In short, they were 
taking part of their final examination in the ele- 
mentary course in animal husbandry given in that 
school. Another picture contained a beautiful driv- 
ing horse and this group of boys standing about him 
with score-cards in hand in the same manner. 

Since that time I have received quite a number 
of pictures similar to these from other schools in 
the state. One distinguishing characteristic of this 
group of pictures is that some interested farmer or 
group of farmers can be seen in the background, or 
to the extreme right or the extreme left, in almost 
every one of them. These attentive onlookers tell 
a gratifying story. Their very presence proves 
that the school is dealing with things that interest 
them. 

The successful school of the twentieth century 
must reach the people back at home as well as the 
children in attendance. It is a mistake to think 
that the public school exists for children only. It 
has numerous obligations to the parents and other 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 55 

grown people. Much of its success depends upon 
its skill in administering to their wants and needs. 
The judging of live stock, boys' and girls' indus- 
trial clubs, home projects, the school fair and the 
social center, when discreetly used, are a few of the 
devices by which these ends may be attained. 

7. Home Projects. — One of the most indus- 
trious creatures on earth is a healthy child. Normal 
children crave employment. They are anxious for 
things to do. They are eternally busy. Idleness is 
contrary to their nature. It is a mistake to say that 
children are lazy. They merely rebel against doing 
things that are of no interest to them. Grown 
people do the same. 

The normal human animal of all ages is a crea- 
ture of action. Children may not always choose 
the most profitable thing to do, but they are always 
doing something. Enforced idleness will destroy 
much of the best there is in them. The normal 
youth likes to express himself in deeds wrought 
with his own hands. He will do so if the oppor- 
tunity is given him and the stimulus of encourage- 
ment is judiciously apphed. 

In one community a boy recently improvised a 
wireless telegraph instrument and innocently amused 
himself by intercepting passing messages until fed- 



56 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

eral officials came out and confiscated his apparatus ; 
in another, a boy made and installed a kitchen sink, 
doing all the necessary plumbing with his own hands ; 
at a third place, trap-nests for the pure-bred hens 
and brooders for the little chicks were made by a lad 
of twelve years ; and at literally scores of places, boys 
have raised prize-winning acres of corn and peanuts, 
and have fed calves and pigs that took first pre- 
miums in the show rings at the county fairs. In 
like manner, homes have been screened, screens have 
been kept in good repair, breeding-places for flies and 
mosquitoes have been destroyed, ants have been 
exterminated, gardens grown, and fruits and vege- 
tables preserved for home consumption by schools 
that have fostered projects to be conducted by pupils 
at home outside of school hours. 

These projects conducted at home have not only 
furnished many practical problems for the arithmetic 
classes, valuable lessons in live-stock feeding and 
home sanitation, and the richest sort of content for 
papers in original English composition, but they 
have given the homes they have touched an entirely 
different attitude toward the school. These schools 
have made themselves centers of immediate service 
to the homes, and the homes are respecting and 
admiring them in return for it. The well-adapted 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 57 

and well-directed project is a worthy instrument of 
education and a valuable instrument of moral strat- 
egy for the school when properly used by the 
sagacious teacher. 

8. The Community Fair. — Two years ago one 
of the best two-teacher schools in Texas held a com- 
munity fair. The essential features of it were an 
exhibition of school work and farm products, and 
a demonstration of cooking and food preparation 
by the women and girls in the community. The 
farm exhibits were shown to good advantage and 
gave the appearance of a county fair. Seven- 
teen farms were represented by as many small 
booths. The farm exhibits for these seventeen 
booths were collected and arranged by the children 
under the direction of the teacher. The final 
arrangements were made on Saturday morning, and 
the people were invited to come in the afternoon. 
They came and spread supper on the school ground 
and stayed till ten o'clock at night. A week later 
one of the local papers published the following 
account : 

"The girls from eight to sixteen years had a 
table beautifully decorated with flowers and spread 
with white linen. It was loaded with good things 
to eat of their own cooking. Prizes were awarded 
to each of the following culinary articles; cookies. 



58 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

chocolate pie, potato salad, jelly rolls, ginger snaps, 
muffins, cocoanut pie, angel food cake, light rolls, 
and peach jelly. 

"The following agricultural products were ex- 
hibited: cotton, corn, popcorn, ribbon cane, bunch 
beans, soy-beans, peanuts, sweet potatoes, Irish 
potatoes, radishes, muskmelons, watermelons, pears, 
squashes, pecans, broomcorn, honey, peaches, apples 
and sunflowers. 

"After partaking of the good things to eat for 
supper, a good program was rendered in the usual 
way." 

Six months later the same paper said: 

"This community was greatly benefited by 
that meeting. It is still profiting from it, for the 
after-stimulation is still vibrant in its nerves. 
Other social and educational gatherings have fol- 
lowed. Those people have discovered something 
about themselves they did not know before. They 
have a rich treasure of good local talent that has 
been thoroughly unconscious of itself all these 
years and lying dormant from lack of use. The 
community has just begun to realize what it can do. 
Industrially, it is experiencing a new birth. Some 
good authorities are guessing that a number of 
enviable agricultural prizes will be taken at the 
county fair next year by the schoolboys. Socially, 
the people are awake. Educationally, they are 
looking up. The work of a more extended use of 
the school plant is well begun. It has brought a 
new era in the activities of those people. And 
every country school in Texas would multiply its 
usefulness many times if it were more closely artic- 
ulated with the lives of the people who patronize it. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 59 

In this way the schools could add much to the 
attractiveness of country life." 

9. School-Improvement Day. — The oftener the 
patrons of a school meet at the schoolhouse, the 
greater are the chances of their being valuable 
school workers. When the path from the home to 
the schoolhouse door is dim and seldom traveled, 
the home is usually apathetic in its support of the 
school. When people assemble en masse at school, 
church or club, the tendency is to forget selfish per- 
sonal affairs and become community-minded. 
Public-spirited people never live to themselves. No 
man can be a good citizen and live alone. Exclu- 
siveness harbors selfishness. 

School-Improvement Day should be one of the 
big annual events in every rural-school district. It 
is a most legitimate way of calling the people to- 
gether and fastening their attention for an entire 
day on the physical needs of the school. When the 
school grounds need leveling, Avhen weeds that 
have grown during vacation need cutting and burn- 
ing, and when window-panes are to be replaced and 
desks repaired, there is no better plan than for the 
patrons of the school to combine a day of labor with 
a day of pleasure by bringing dinner to the school- 
house and doing the work themselves. That is 



6o THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

much better than hiring some carpenter to do the 
work and paying for it out of the school revenues. 
The economy is a small matter. The effect in the 
attitude of the patrons toward the school is the main 
thing. It takes spirit and enthusiasm, as well as 
finances and equipment, to run a school. It is hard 
for a public school to rise very much above the level 
of the community's desire for enlightenment. 

The foregoing are only a few of the many de- 
vices that may contribute to the generating of 
wholesome school spirit, but space forbids their 
further enumeration. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

What is the most conspicuous piece of school 
improvement you can make in your school this year? 
Have your playgrounds been properly improved and 
attractively beautified? Would a terracing level or a 
Babcock milk tester in the school meet a need in the 
community where you are working this year? Have 
you been guilty of confining too much of your arith- 
metic instruction to the text-book? Do you have any 
patrons who are practical ranchmen or stock-raisers 
to whom a few school lessons and demonstrations in 
live-stock judging would appeal? If you are not 
capable of conducting a live-stock judging contest, is 
there any one locally available who would do it for 
you? How about the county farm demonstration 
agent? Do you have a copy of the bulletin on school 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 6l 

and community fairs from the University of Texas? 
What are the chief industries of your school patrons? 
What are some of the home projects you might under- 
take this year? 



CHAPTER IV 

Some Vitalizing Educational Agencies 
AND Organizations 

Teachers should be famihar with the activities 
discussed in this chapter because of their vitaHzing 
influences among rural people. When skilfully 
employed they simplify many of the difficulties that 
stand in the way of healthful school sentiment. 

I. The Boys' School-Improvement Club. — In 
a rural school of four teachers I saw modern drink- 
ing fountains for the boys and another group just 
like them for the girls. There was a shower bath 
for the boys down on the athletic field. The water 
was supplied from a well by a gasoline pump at the 
teacher's home more than two hundred yards away. 
There were some new tennis courts, and a new flag- 
pole had just been put up. One of the old school 
buildings, abandoned when a consolidation was 
made, had been moved, repaired and equipped with 
new apparatus for the agricultural laboratory. I 
asked how all these improvements had been made. 
The principal said, "By the Boys' School-Improve- 
ment Club." Then I got the following information : 

62 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 63 

The people in that district were very poor. 
Most of them owned their homes, but the farms 
were quite small and unprofitable. The district 
contained only sixteen square miles and the property 
values in it were so small that a fifty cent tax pro- 
duced less than four hundred dollars of available 
school revenue per year. 

There were about twenty high-minded, ambitious 
boys and young men in the community. Most of 
them would have taken a college education had they 
been financially able to pay their ways through 
school. Being unable to do this, they decided to 
make the most of what was left for them at home. 
For this purpose the School-Improvement Club was 
organized with twenty-two members, each member 
pledging himself to plant one acre of cotton and 
contribute the proceeds for the purchase of needed 
school equipment. 

At the instance of the club, near the end of the 
school year, a big educational day was planned. It 
was the biggest public event ever in the history of 
the community. Nearly two thousand people were 
present. In the parade there were seven decorated 
floats, the school orchestra, the members of the 
boys' and girls' athletic teams marching in their 
uniforms, and more than one thousand citizens 



64 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

keeping step in double file. The day's program 
consisted of music, speaking, exhibitions of school 
work, athletic contests, and stock-judging contests. 
The proceeds from the sales of candy, ice-cream, 
and cold drinks for the day yielded a net profit of 
one hundred and sixty dollars to the treasury of the 
organization. This amount was promptly used to 
meet one of the payments on the new piano and to 
purchase additional equipment for the domestic- 
science laboratory. 

The principal of this school knew how to harness 
the excess energy of the boys in that locality and 
apply it to useful enterprises. The painting and 
repairing of the old building used for a laboratory 
and all the plumbing in the installation of the water- 
works were done by the boys. These boys, filled 
with civic pride and the desire for industrial effi- 
ciency, were rapidly converting that poverty- 
stricken community into a better place for the 
people to live. They constituted one of the most 
inspiring school-improvement organizations I have 
ever seen. 

2. The Boy Scouts. — The National Council of 
the Boy Scouts of America, with headquarters in 
New York City, was originally incorporated in 
February, 19 10, and chartered by Congress June 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 65 

15, 19 1 6.* The organization now has a discipHned 
group of 397,208 Boy Scouts and Scout officials 
definitely organized. There are 28,593 Scout Mas- 
ters and assistants. Another 54,402 act as council- 
men and troop committeemen. The Scout officials 
are clean men and most of them college-bred. 

"The Scout law, covering twelve fundamental 
principles, requires a Scout first of all to be trust- 
worthy. That means that he must not tell a lie, 
cheat, or deceive, but keep trust sacred. A Scout 
is loyal to all to whom loyalty is due, including his 
Scout leader, his home, his parents and his country. 
Furthermore, a Scout is helpful, prepared at all 
times to save life, help injured persons and do at 
least one good turn daily. A Scout is friendly to 
all — a brother to every other Scout. A Scout is 
courteous, especially to women, children and old 
people, and he must not take any pay for being 
courteous. A Scout is kind to animals and does not 
kill or hurt any living creature needlessly. A Scout 
is obedient. A Scout is cheerful, even when facing 
hardship and drudgery. A Scout is thrifty. A 
Scout is clean in body and thought, stands for clean 
speech, clean sport, clean habits, and travels with a 
clean crowd," 

No expensive equipment is required for a Scout 
organization. All that is needed is the outdoors, a 
group of boys and a competent leader. Outdoor 



*Address all communications to The Boy Scouts of America, 200 
Fifth Avenue, New York City. 



66 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Scout training, with its hiking", swimming, camping, 
cooking, signaHng, woodcraft, nature study and the 
like, enriches the fellowship and respect the boys 
have for the man teach who is qualified and will- 
ing to lead them as Scout Master. The boy in his 
early teens idolizes the grown man who has inter- 
ests in common with him and is capable of adopting 
him as a companion and associate. His hero is the 
man who has the skill to lead him and the ability to 
do the simplest sort of practical things better than 
he can. 

There are a few men teachers with a practical 
knowledge of boys and a love for outdoor sports 
and outdoor Hfe who are making very valuable Scout 
Masters. A hike and a camp with four meals in 
the woods from Friday afternoon to Saturday night 
puts them in closer touch with the real life of the 
boys than a whole month in the class-room and on 
the school ground. These men are valuable civic 
and moral benefactors to the groups they lead. 
They are reducing the percentage of vicious habits 
and moral delinquency among boys and simplifying 
some of the most difficult problems of school disci- 
pline. Every man teacher would do well to familiar- 
ize himself with this organization and consider its 
possibilities for good in his community. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 67 

3. Camp-Fire Girls. — The Camp-Fire Girls 
had its beginning as an organization in 191 1.* It 
attempts to do for the girls what the Boy Scouts is 
doing for the boys. Its object is to take small 
groups of girls that are socially homogeneous and 
interpret daily things in terms of romance, beauty 
and usefulness. A few enterprising women 
teachers have made profitable use of this order for 
young girls as part of their program of education 
and recreation. 

4. The Story-Teller's League. — As a rule the 
rural communities that practise cooperation in edu- 
cation and industry to the best advantage are those 
where the people spend the greatest amount of their 
leisure time together. Any agency that brings 
people together for social and cultural improvement 
has a psychic value that leads to mutual under- 
standing and systematic cooperation. In this way 
individualism is conquered and selfish persons 
changed into useful members of the cooperative 
group. 

Among the social and cultural activities in one 
of the best organized rural communities of my 
knowledge is the Young People's Story-Teller's 



*National Headquarters of the Camp-Fire Girls, 461 Fourth Avenue, 
New York City. 



68 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

League. The young people meet two evenings each 
month under the direction of appointed leaders for 
two hours of pleasure and pastime at story-telling. 
Sometimes the program of stories is taken from 
Greek literature. Other times it is made up from 
the folk-lore of the Danes, the Scotch, the Hindus, 
the American negro, or some other interesting 
people. One time, I remember, the program was 
confined entirely to O. Henry, and another time to 
Hawthorne. Again the program was of a miscel- 
laneous character, including the stories of "Little 
Black Sambo and the Three Tigers," "How the 
Camel Got His Hump," "The Mongoose," by 
Strickland Gillilan, and several others highly 
appropriate for the occasion. 

Most of this group of young people have learned 
how to tell a story in a forceful, interesting manner. 
Their personalities and powers of speech have been 
greatly strengthened by this practise. Besides that, 
the evenings spent in story-telling constitute happy 
chapters in the lives of all the people in attendance. 
They have been a valuable contributing influence to 
the present high state of social and economic soli- 
darity in that school district. They are worthy of 
duplication in many other places where talented 
young people reside. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 69 

5. The Young People's Reading Circle In a 

few instances the reading circle for the senior young 
people has proved quite popular. This organi- 
zation usually includes a homogeneous group, 
seldom exceeding fifteen in number, composed of 
teachers, grown pupils and young people not in 
school. It may meet at the schoolhouse or at the 
homes of different members of the circle from time 
to time. 

In one village the reading circle of fourteen 
persons meets at the home of some one of its mem- 
bers every Friday evening at eight o'clock. While 
this plan is working successfully at that place, I 
would not recommend it for general practise. The 
reading-room of the schoolhouse is, as a rule, the 
more logical meeting-place. 

I have been present at two meetings of reading 
circles in rural places the past year. At one meet- 
ing Bryant's "Thanatopsis" was read and discussed ; 
at the other Hawthorne's ''Great Stone Face" was 
the lesson for the evening. Both of these occasions 
were social and cultured feasts for all present. 

The reading circle well conducted has great pos- 
sibilities as an allied school activity. It should be 
more generally encouraged by all teachers in rural 
districts. 



70 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

6. The Interscholastic League. — For the last 
nine years contests of various sorts among the pub- 
lic schools of Texas have been promoted by the 
University. They now include contests in debat- 
ing, declamation, essay writing, spelling and 
athletics. More than two thousand five hundred 
schools were members of the Interscholastic League 
organization last year. 

The league contests have done much to awaken 
school spirit among pupils and patrons. Their 
object is to bring the competitive instincts into action 
and foster the spirit of friendly rivalry among 
neighboring school communities. Schools are 
always proud of their winning champions. And 
the champions themselves are abundantly com- 
pensated for all their efforts through the enjoyment 
of a new and inspiring self-confidence, the result 
and side companion of successful achievement. 

The interscholastic debates and declamations 
have been wonderful engines of education in this 
state for the past five or six years. It is estimated 
that three hundred thousand people heard the 
patriotic declamations given last year. The debates 
on Compulsory Education and Woman Suffrage 
had a tremendous influence on public opinion in 
their time and were, no doubt, instrumental in ha- 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 7I 

sterling the day when new laws relating to them were 
written on our statute books. 

The athletic contests are doing much to purify 
interscholastic sports. Less than a decade ago 
school athletics in Texas were deplorably corrupt. 
But shoddy tricks and foul plays to win are now 
much less prevalent. Honesty in athletics is 
achieving popularity, and crookedness is being 
branded with the odium of public disapproval. New 
conceptions of good sport are being established. 
Teams are learning how to contest for the sake of 
the sport and not merely to win the game. 

Membership in the Interscholastic League has 
become a popular thing for public schools of every 
rank in Texas. It has given many schools a chance 
to prove themselves and get on the educational map. 
And in using the League to promote community 
welfare, teachers should not overlook the fact that 
they are also establishing a reputation for them- 
selves that will likely lead to promotion. Every 
state in the South should have such an organization 
as the Interscholastic League in Texas. 

7. The Parent-Teacher's Association. — The 
parent-teacher's association may be a benefit or it 
may be a detriment to the welfare of the public 
school. I have seen instances of both results. 



'J^ THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Where there is cordial and sympathetic coopera- 
tion between the head of the school and the leading 
spirits of the association, it has great possibilities 
for beneficial service to the school. But when the 
association presumptuously takes over the reins of 
school administration, as sometimes happens, fric- 
tion is sure to come. When that occurs, the 
principal of the school is usually to blame. The 
far-sighted principal will think and plan in advance 
of the association, and anticipating possible dis- 
agreements that might arise, prevent their occur- 
rence through the assignment of duties beset with 
less danger to the peace of the administration. The 
best way to handle a parent-teacher's association is 
through the judicious assignment of work for it 
to do. 

But all principals of schools do not possess the 
faculty of managing a parent-teacher's association 
successfully. One day the principal of a five- 
teacher school was apparently very unhappy. I 
ventured to ask the president of the school board 
what was wrong. "He is sick; he has the worst 
case of Mothers' Club in Texas," was the amusing 
reply. This trustee was entirely correct. A few 
unsophisticated mothers had the upper hand and 
were directing most of the internal affairs of the 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 73 

school. They had prescribed the length of some 
of the class periods, selected books poorly adapted 
to the needs of the library, wrecked school athletics, 
and patronized most of the grafting school supply 
agents that came their way that year. Indeed, I 
saw them present the school with a set of Stod- 
dard's Lectures purchased at an exorbitant price, 
when the library was by no means adequately sup- 
plied with elementary reading material for the pupils 
below the eighth grade. That principal had 
abundant cause for being sick and unhappy. 

In another school there was the utmost harmony 
between the mothers' club and the administration. 
The playground equipment was new and attractive. 
The piano and some very appropriate school pic- 
tures had been purchased the year before. A new 
Victrola and forty records had just been procured. 
But most interesting of all was the way the organized 
mothers cooperated in equipping the domestic- 
science laboratory and in securing the teacher of 
domestic science. 

An agricultural laboratory had been provided 
for the boys in high school. The mothers began 
saying: "If it is well that our sons become more 
efficient farmers, is it not equally as well that we 
prepare our daughters for greater efficiency as 



74 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

farmers' wives? If a balanced ration for a pig, a 
calf, or a dairy cow be a matter of importance, is 
not a balanced ration for the family at home of still 
greater importance?" So the principal of the 
school, seizing the opportunity, inspired them to 
make the effort to raise funds for the purchase of 
laboratory equipment and the employment of a 
domestic-science teacher. They accomphshed what 
they undertook. Standard apparatus was installed 
and a competent teacher employed. But the four 
teachers already employed constituted, in practise, 
a standing advisory committee to this mothers' club 
in all it did. These teachers were sagacious experts 
in the administration of school affairs, and through 
them the organized mothers had learned that it is 
better to cooperate than to dictate. So, after all, 
the secret of managing a mothers' club rests in the 
teacher's ability to assign it timely and appropriate 
things to do and to cooperate with it as a sort of 
silent partner and confidential adviser in the 
accomplishment of the duties assigned. 

8. Other Vitalizing Activities — Several other 
agencies for unifying the interests of young people 
and stimulating the cooperative instincts among 
them might be mentioned. Among them I would 
name the dramatic club, choral club, orchestra, liter- 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 75 

ary society, and the various industrial clubs for boys 
and girls: corn clubs, pig clubs, poultry clubs, can- 
ning clubs, sewing circles and the like. For the 
comrnunity at large there are the fair association, 
pure seed association, breeders' association, coop- 
erative marketing association, etc. 

Not all the projects and activities mentioned in 
this chapter are ever practicable or even desirable in 
any one community, but there are many com- 
munities where, with the proper adaptations, one or 
more of them can be put to good use. Teachers 
will do well to keep them all in mind. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. Name some school- improvement projects that 
fall within the province of a boys' school-improvement 
association. Show how the boys' school-improvement 
association can be made a valuable means for teaching 
practical community civics. 

2. What are some of the principles that the Boy 
Scouts stand for ? What are some of the qualifications 
of a good Scout Master? 

3. What are some of the qualifications of a woman 
teacher who can make a success of a girls' Camp- 
Fire organization? Describe one type of woman 
who would be sure to fail in such an undertaking. 

4. What are some of the conditions under which a 
siory-teller's league might reasonably be expected to 
succeed? Describe a group of young people who 



'j(> THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

would give their approval and support to such an 
organization. What are some of the advantages that 
telling a story in one's own language has over telling 
it in the exact language of the author? 

5. Name some of the conditions that would make 
:x young people's reading circle practicable. Describe 
an ideal teacher for promoting and directing a reading 
circle. 

6. Give some reasons for the remarkable success of 
the Interscholastic League in Texas. What has been 
its influence on interscholastic athletics? To what 
extent has public opinion been influenced by the inter- 
scholastic debates and declamations ? Would it be well 
for every southern state to have an organization similar 
to the Interscholastic League in Texas? 

7. Name some of the benefits to be derived from 
the parent-teacher's association. How may a parent- 
teacher's association become a nuisance to a school? 
Give the best method for managing a parent-teacher's 
association. 

REFERENCES 

Cubberly, Rural Life and Education, Houghton 
Mifflin Company, New York City. 

Curtis, Play and Recreation for the Open Country, 
Macmillan Company, New York City. 

Puffer, The Boy and His Gang, Houghton Mifflin 
Company, New York City. 

Stern, Neighborhood Entertainments, Sturgis & 
Walton Company, New York City. 



CHAPTER V 
School Playgrounds 

I. Playgrounds and Democracy. — After three 
years of the rebelHon in Mexico, an intelHgent 
refugee said to me: "I wish Mexico had the play- 
grounds of Texas. They would soon teach our 
people how to govern themselves. It is a saying as 
old as the Greeks that the playground is the lab- 
oratory of democracy. And very truly it is. It is 
on the playground in the early years of childhood 
that the lessons of compromise, give-and-take, and 
respect for the other fellow are first learned. And 
these concepts are of fundamental value in making 
citizens for a democracy. But the unfortunate 
children of my country have poor opportunities for 
friendly contests among themselves on the play- 
grounds. We have very few playgrounds down 
there. 

"Then, again," he said, "the games that interest 
our people are not like your games. Our people 
flock about the bull-ring, the cock-pit and the rou- 
lette wheel, while your people are witnessing 
contests on the football gridiron, the baseball 

77 



y8 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

diamond and the tennis court. Your national sports 
bring into action a group of interests entirely differ- 
ent from those elicited by the recreational practises 
of my land. They furnish a fine background in 
training for team-work and group activities in local 
and state affairs." 

No doubt we are forgetful of the values of our 
playgrounds. They are so commonplace and uni- 
versal that we do not appreciate their full worth. 
We accept their benefits with thorough indiffer- 
ence. But fortunate is America that the playground 
is an indispensable adjunct of her public schools. 

2. Playgrounds and Juvenile Delinquency. — 
Only recently I visited a three-teacher school one 
Friday afternoon. The principal's face bore the 
unmistakable impress of a week laden with worry 
and exasperation. She characterized a group of 
adolescent boys as ^'positively iniquitous." They 
had turned a man's hogs out of the pen, tied a dog 
and a cat together on the playground, thrown stones 
at some passers-by, raided a pecan orchard, and 
dropped some live ducks into the school cistern. 
The truth is, they had the teacher bluffed and 
they knew it. 

But these rowdy youngsters were merely normal 
boys. They were the sort that would fight for an 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 79 

estimable senior friend and leader in the very face 
of grim death. Their blood was red, their nerves 
full of vitality and their muscles tingling for action. 
I saw them all. I talked to them collectively and 
to most of them individually. They were fine 
young fellows. 

What was the trouble? They were leaderless. 
They were ruddy with health, and in each one of 
them was a pent-up reservoir of excess energy with 
no provision for its escape through the activities of 
a well-regulated playground. The school yard was 
a wilderness of weeds, cobblestones and scraps of 
old paper. There was not a single piece of play- 
ground apparatus in sight. The pupils were not en- 
couraged to play. They ran riot at recess. They 
got into mischief for want of other things to engage 
their attention during the hours of intermission. 

All normal boys like group athletics and play- 
ground recreations. Healthy boys are creatures of 
action and industry. They resent uninteresting 
employment, but they are not lazy. One of the 
easiest animals on earth to control is a normal boy. 
Give him something he likes to do and plenty of it. 
That solves the difficulty. The boy that does not 
respond to this treatment is either subnormal or in 
poor health. 



8o THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

3. Playing for Sport vs. Playing to Win the 
Game. — I believe the Englishmen are better sports- 
men than the Americans. The average Englishman 
will ask you, ''Was it a good game ?" The average 
American will ask you, ''What was the score?" 
The Englishman plays for the sport. The Ameri- 
can plays to win the game. 

And the same spirit dominates most of the 
American sportsmen in field with gun or on stream 
with fishing rod. Every year I go to the Texas 
coast with a party of fifteen for a week's fishing in 
the surf. The only measure of sportsmanship some 
of those good fellows have is the fulness of the creel. 
Their first inquiry is, "How many this morning, 
and how big are they?" Seldom do they ask, 
"How did you get them, and what sorts of baits and 
lures did you use?" With an hour of skilful 
maneuvering the real sportsman will conquer a one- 
hundred-pound tarpon with a delicate number twelve 
line, while the pseudo-sportsman and semi-savage 
will overpower him and drag him in, hand over, with 
a cord strong enough for hawser in less than two 
minutes. 

We have those from the field, stream and athletic 
court who pose as sportsmen who, in truth, have 
never learned the first letter in the alphabet of clean 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 8l 

high-class sport. These savages are on the side- 
Hnes at every athletic contest and in the ranks of 
almost every hunting and fishing party. Not long 
ago I was in an all-night fox hunt. The fox, tired 
and exhausted, was bayed in a huge oak tree just 
before day. Then some unsportsman-like brutes 
came from a neighboring farm-house. "Chunk him 
out and let the dogs kill him," they began to ejac- 
ulate. ''No," interrupted a high-minded sportsman. 
''Leave him alone and we shall have another fine 
race some night next week." 

Many a time in the primitive days of less than 
twenty years ago I heard spectators shout to the 
football contestants, "Use 'em rough! Hit 'em 
hard! Kill 'em!" And cracked heads, bleeding 
noses and promiscuous bruises gave convincing 
attestations that the murderous instincts of the 
players responded to these gruesome promptings 
with all the ferocity of the ancient jungle. But a 
new day dawned and is now well advanced in col- 
lege sports. Intercollegiate athletics are infinitely 
cleaner than they were a dozen years ago. Our 
college people are learning how to play. But many 
of the country people have not yet learned how to 
play or what to play for. "Rotten umpire," "Put 
'em out," and all sorts of rude jeers at the players 



82 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

are much more common in the country than in our 
city ball parks. 

Last year I saw a country ball game terminate 
in a free-for-all fight. Bats, mits and masks flew 
recklessly in the air. Blue epithets whizzed in all 
directions. After the storm had subsided, a vener- 
able man calmly remarked, "Well, if the boys 
could play oftener, they might learn how to play 
without fighting." He was correct. To prohibit 
baseball till boys learn how to play would be as 
absurd as prohibiting them from going in the water 
till they learn to swim. Country boys will learn to 
play agreeably and what to play for when the school 
playgrounds are used more intensively and super- 
vised more closely. 

4. Interscholastic Athletics. — Friendly rivalry 
fosters school spirit. It begets loyalty for the home 
team. Every community looks upon its own cham- 
pions with pride. Interscholastic contests also blot 
out much of petty narrowness by giving pupils a 
broader acquaintance. The knowledge "that there 
are other people beyond the mountains" makes a 
chapter of no inconsequential value in a child's edu- 
cation. . I was reared in a quiet country district. We 
never went very far from home or saw very much of 
other people. The local pastor often told us we were 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 83 

the brightest, most promising children he had ever 
seen. The poHticians came out occasionally and told 
us the same thing. In our childish innocence, we be- 
lieved what they said. I thought that we had the 
best church choir, the prettiest girls, the handsomest 
carriages and the biggest houses in the land. We 
were the Boston of culture and the hub of the uni- 
verse. We were in the center of all that was worth 
emulating and living for. We were It. But when 
I grew older and saw farther, my childish eyes were 
disillusioned. It was a revelation to me that the 
next community had as pretty girls, as sweet 
singers, as well-groomed horses and as big houses 
as we. And I find there are some children in the 
world to-day just as self-centered as I was as a 
child. 

Interscholastic athletics also give a fine training 
in minor responsibilities. The captains, managers, 
treasurers and secretaries of the teams participate 
in these responsibilities. Games have to be sched- 
uled, equipments procured and transportation 
provided. The adroit teacher will delegate most 
of these duties to the pupils' representatives, reserv- 
ing advisory and veto powers to himself. 

But athletic contests are beset with certain diffi- 
culties and disadvantages. Chief among these are 



84 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

providing suitable chaperons for the teams on trips 
away from home; taking time out of school for 
playing match games; and annoyances from cheap 
''barber-shop" sports not in school who encourage 
foul plays in order to win. No high-school team 
should ever be sent away from home to fill an en- 
gagement without a responsible adult chaperon, 
preferably a member of the faculty. Protests 
against taking time out of school for match games 
can usually be met satisfactorily by scheduhng 
games on Saturdays. Corrupt coaching from low- 
bred outsiders can best be combated through the 
sense of honor and the respect for fair play and 
clean sportsmanship instilled into the pupils by the 
teacher in the class-room and on the supervised 
playground while the teams are in training. 

5. Teachers and Parents Not in S5mipathy with 
Athletic Sports. — A sick man aroused himself from 
a delirious stupor and said : "I have passed through 
the most miserable hour of my life. I have been 
dreaming that I had turned to a woodpile." And so 
it is. There are some living people who have let 
portions of their natures die as dead as woodpiles 
and haystacks. They have all their physical mem- 
bers, but they go limping through life with a half, or 
a fourth, or a fortieth of their normal spiritual en- 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 85 

titles gone. They have forgot that they once en- 
joyed the things that normal children and young 
people of to-day enjoy. The most unpardonable of 
these distorted unfortunates are certain grouchy old 
bachelors and old maids in the school-room. 

The following story and confession came to me 
from a man I know very well. 'T can get very 
little out of an athletic contest," he said. 'T live 
near a college athletic court, but I have not seen a 
game in five years. When the games are on, I hear 
the band playing and five thousand voices singing 
college songs fit to go into ecstasies, but it all has 
no lure for me. Sometimes I view myself with 
pity as I sit in my office all too conscious of my 
incapacity to share in the merriment about me. 

"Eight years ago, in the psychological laboratory, 
I was convinced of my subnormality in this respect. 
I immediately set about to cure it. I went to the 
athletic headquarters and purchased a season ticket 
to all the games for the year. There were thirty- 
two events on it. I was determined to make myself 
go and get into the spirit of the contests. Four 
events had passed, and I discovered I had attended 
none of them. Then I renewed my resolutions and 
purchased another ticket. I thought I would 
take some charitable friend along with me who 



86 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

knew the games and would help me get into the 
spirit of them. But when the year was over one of 
the tickets had twenty-eight untaken events on it 
and the other had twenty-six. I still have them 
both. 

^'Ten years ago I taught in a small college. 
During my two years there I was the most unpop- 
ular male member of the entire faculty with the 
boys who loved athletic sports. I had very little 
sympathy with such activities. I could see but little 
else in them than a waste of time. I know now I 
was unfair to the boys in some instances. I 
have come to see that the trouble was not with the 
boys. It was with me. They were healthy nor- 
mal fellows. As for the enjoyment of the 
competitive sports on the athletic field, I was an 
anemic monstrosity. 

"I regret my inability to appreciate a ball game. 
But a thing still more deplorable is the fact that 
there are so many parents, school trustees and 
teachers just as deeply afflicted with similar inca- 
pacities who have never once realized it. It is 
criminally unjust for them to exercise authority over 
children and young people in school. It would pay 
every teacher introspect^vely to take stock of him- 
self occasionally and see just where he stands. I 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL ^y 

think I could deal much more fairly with boys now 
than I did ten years ago. I know more about 
myself." 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. How may regard for law and respect for the 
rights of others be taught on a basketball court? 
Democratic government is nothing more than team- 
work for group betterment on a gigantic scale. Its 
benefits are the fruits of cooperation. Show how the 
spirit of team-work and cooperation is stimulated by 
baseball. ^ ^ 

2. Will giving a bad boy something he likes to do 
make him less difficult to control? Why do boys 
without interesting employment on the playground so 
often get into mischief at recess? Are normal boys 
naturally good or bad? Is there any creature more 
devotedly loyal to an estimable leader than a boy ? 

3. Why is the average Englishman a better sports- 
man than the average American ? Do your pupils play 
for the sport or to win the game? Account for inter- 
scholastic athletics being purer than they were ten 
years ago. Why are fights more frequent among 
country baseball teams than among college baseball 
teams ? 

4. What are some of the beneficial results from 
friendly rivalry among neighboring schools? Why 
should the teacher always have advisory and veto 
powers on the students' athletic councils? Do you 
allow your basketball team to go away from home 
unchaperoned by some teacher or other responsible 
person ? Do your trustees protest against taking time 
out of school for match games? Are there any 



05 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

unscrupulous persons not in school who would corrupt 
the minds and practises of your players? 

5. Are you a lover of plays, games and athletic 
sports at school? How many adult people do you 
know whose faculty for appreciating athletic contests 
is dead and functionless ? How about yourself ? 

REFERENCES 

Bancroft, Games for the School, Home, and 
Gymnasium, Macmillan Company, New York City. 
(A most excellent book.) 

Burchenal, Folk Dances and Singing Games, 
G. Schirmer, Publisher, New York. 

Curtis, Education Through Play, Macmillan Co., 
New York. 

Curtis, The Reorganized School Playground, Bulle- 
tin No. 16, 1912, U. S. Bureau of Education, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 

]o\mson,. Education by Plays and Games, Ginn & Co., 
New York. 

Leland, Playground Technique and Playcraft, F. A. 
Bassett & Co., Springfield, Mass. (This is an inval- 
uable book.) 

Mero, American Playgrounds, The Dale Association, 
Boston, Mass. (One of the very best publications on 
playgrounds.) 

State Department of Education, Bulletin on Play and 
Recreation, Richmiond, Va. (Especially valuable for 
rural schools.) 

University of Texas, Play and Athletics, Extension 
Bulletin, No. 1842, Austin, Texas. 

Spaulding, A. G., Manufacturer of Sporting Goods 
and Playground Apparatus, Chicopee, Mass. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Social Factor in Rural Life 

I. The Country As a Victim of Inadequate 
Social and Cultural Opportunities. — In the heart of 
the Cross-Timbers, seventy-five miles west of Fort 
Worth and nine miles from the Fort Worth and 
Rio Grande Railroad, is a small country-school dis- 
trict called Selden. In the fall of 1905, within a 
single month, fifteen young people from that place 
packed their trunks and went away to school. 
Some of the farmers estimated that their going 
away would take several thousand dollars out of the 
community to be spent elsewhere. Others said it 
would be economy to maintain a first-class high 
school at home. But most of them failed to see 
that the loss of the presence and good influence of 
those young people was far more serious than the 
cost of maintaining them in the schools they had 
chosen to attend. 

I was in that community two months later. The 
experience was most depressing. The church choir 
had lost much of its best material. The choir leader 
and the pianist were both gone. The Sunday- 

89 



90 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

school was sadly depleted. The superintendent was 
discouraged. The whole place seemed desolate, 
bereaved and melancholy. 

That community had paid the penalty attached 
to social and educational neglect. It had failed to 
satisfy the social and cultural hungers of its most 
enterprising young people. Some of its most vital 
blood had been taken from its veins. It was im- 
poverished by the absence of some of the people it 
could least afford to lose. And what is worse still, 
only two of that entire group of fifteen virile young 
persons have returned to that community to make 
it their permanent home, and ten of the remaining 
thirteen have gone to the towns and cities to live. 

One time I made a close examination of a rural 
school with four teachers where eight boys were 
doing high-school work. I asked these boys what 
they meant to do after graduation. "We want to 
attend a business college and equip ourselves to hold 
positions in the city/' was the unanimous reply. 
They gave no particular reason for not wanting to 
stay in the country more than that it did not suit 
them. Note the following questions and answers : 

"What do you do for pastime?" 

"Well, nothing specially." 

"Have you a ball team?" 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 9I 

"Yes, but it's mighty weak." 

"Have you a tennis team?" 

"No." 

"Have you a dramatic club?" 

"No." 

''Have you a musical organization of any sort?" 

"No." 

"When have you had a public gathering in the 
school auditorium?" 

"Not since November; almost three months." 

"What do you do when Sunday comes?" 

"Sometimes we go to church, when there is any." 

"How often do you have church services?" 

"Once a month at one of the churches, and just 
whenever they can get a preacher at the other one." 

Who could blame those boys for not wanting to 
stay at that place ? They were dying of social hun- 
ger. Their desire to get away was one of the very 
best evidences that there was something in each of 
them inherently worth while. Had they been con- 
tented to remain in that monotonous environment, 
it would have been because they were genuinely 
stupid fellows. 

Thus the town continues to levy a tribute on the 
country which it takes each year in the form of 
some of its very best blood. Biologically, some 



92 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

scientists think that this means a rapid lowering of 
the Hfe tension and blood vigor of the country people. 
Those remaining behind become the dominant stock 
and reproduce their kind for another generation. 
Upon them the same selective process is repeated. 
The country has cause for alarm. Normal people 
like to be where things are happening. Solitude 
and ignorance are contrary to their desires. If the 
opportunities for culture and social recreation are 
not provided for them in the country, they will seek 
them elsewhere. 

2. The Social Factor as a Moral Force. — 
Nearly five years ago, in the course of a lecture in 
a small country town, the question was asked. 
"Where is the social center in this village ?" ''The 
barber-shop," a voice replied. The speaker had 
been in that barber-shop, the only one in the village, 
just before coming to the auditorium. Through the 
half-open door in the rear he got the full benefit of 
all the foul vapors from that unwholesome place. 
Since that time I have collected and tabulated a list 
of one hundred and thirty-two social centers in rural 
and village districts where I have been. The}-^ run 
as follows : barber-shop, twenty-six ; depot, twenty- 
one ; drug-store, eighteen ; post-office, seventeen ; 
country store, fifteen; garage, eight; schoolhouse. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 93 

eight; picture show, five; blacksmith shop, five; 
school playground, five; livery stable, two; church, 
two. There is no community without a social cen- 
ter of some sort. The social center is the most 
popular congregating place for conversation, games, 
or idle pastime. Some of them are places where 
boys and girls meet, some are for boys only, and 
some for boys and men of all ages. 

In a certain dismal little village in Texas the old 
abandoned blacksmith shop with the roof caved in 
at one corner is the young men's social gathering 
place. Here they congregate and pitch horseshoes, 
play dominoes, chew tobacco, smoke, swear, fight 
and tell indecent stories. The last time I was at 
that place the justice of the peace's court was in ses- 
sion in the shade of a big oak tree. I counted 
seventy-nine men and boys of the community present 
at the meeting. In addition to them were four law- 
yers and two newspaper men from the county-seat. 
There were seventeen cases on the court's docket 
for the day. They consisted of gaming, fighting, 
dnuikenness and profanity. 

Most of this group of defendants were boys of 
good ability. They did not look like a set of moral 
imbeciles. They were merely the unsuspecting 
victims of vicious surroundings. Their environ- 



94 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

ment was a culture medium for vagabonds, crim- 
inals and fugitives from justice. They were to be 
pitied rather than censured. The temptations to 
mischief were not properly offset by other things. 

I fixed the responsibility for his morbid social 
condition where I think it belonged. I placed it at 
the doors of the school and the church, of the 
teachers and the preachers. They were all derelict 
in the performance of the tasks set before them. Had 
the church been laboring for the social and moral re- 
generation of that community as earnestly as it was 
for the salvation of individual souls in its conven- 
tional services held once a month, the moral fiber of 
those young men would have been appreciably 
stronger. Had the school been as conscious of its 
social obligations to those people as it was desirous 
of maintaining its venerable standards of formal 
instruction, the roster of defendants before the jus- 
tice's court would have been numerically smaller. 
Had there been the proper coordination of rehgious, 
educative and recreational activities at that place, 
much social waste could have been eliminated and 
some valuable human assets prevented from becom- 
ing social liabilities. 

In a certain Swedish community ten miles from 
the railroad there is a beautiful country church. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 95 

The lawns are neatly kept, and there are two tennis 
courts in the churchyard. The pastor of the church 
is president of the local school board and has served 
in that capacity for a number of years. He helped 
organize the band, containing fourteen instruments, 
and has given much valuable assistance to the 
athletic teams and the social activities of his people. 

In an interview this man said to me : ''Our young 
people do not care to go away to the city for their 
amusements. We try to provide entertainment for 
them here at home. We think it a good way to 
prevent mischief and make leisure hours profitable. 
I have resided here for eleven years and there has 
never been a young man arraigned before the 
courts for a misdemeanor of any sort during that 
time." 

The desire for play and social merriment is as 
elemental as the law of gravitation. A modicum 
of leisure rightly employed is a necessary con- 
comitant of health and happiness. No hours have 
so much to do with the making or the marring of 
human character as hours of leisure. They are 
fraught with the greatest possibilities for good and 
for evil. Most people who go wrong, commit 
crimes, or get others into trouble do so during hours 
of leisure given over to idleness. 



g6 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

With more decent church lawns used as com- 
munity playgrounds, and with more schoolhouses 
put to practical use as places of amusement and 
social resort by preachers, teachers and laymen who 
know how to direct people, an environment much 
less hostile to good morals can be created. Therein 
lies one of the greatest possibilities for reducing the 
present high percentage of crime and moral delin- 
quency among our youth. 

3. Beware of Moving Country Children to 
Town to Live. — Moving a family of adolescent chil- 
dren from the country to town is a hazardous 
experiment. The country child with its desires to 
see and its passions for adventure is an easy prey for 
the evils of the city. The newness of the environ- 
ment and the over-stimulation of the senses is more 
than the average country-bred child at the age of 
adolescence can bear with safety. Note the follow- 
ing observations : 

During a period of eight years, 1899- 1907, forty- 
seven country families moved into a certain Texas 
town of less than five thousand population to send 
their children to school. Belonging to these families 
were sixty-two children above sixteen years of age 
and thirty-seven children from thirteen to sixteen 
years old when they came to town. A study of 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 97 

these families was made in 191 1. Forty-nine of the 
sixty-two children in the older group were ranked 
as studious while they were in school, and forty-one 
were succeeding in the work they had subsequently 
chosen to follow. Of the thirty-seven in the 
younger group, not a single one had made a 
creditable success at anything. Two were in the 
penitentiary, nine were classed as street loafers, two 
as professional gamblers, and the rest were without 
a purpose in life. 

It is a great misfortune to the average child to be 
taken from a quiet country environment to the noise 
of town during the restless days of adolescence. 
It costs money to provide social advantages and 
educational opportunities in the country, but it often 
costs character to move children to town at this 
critical time in hfe. 

4. The Social Factor As a Stimulus to Coop- 
eration. — Prior to the World War there were ap- 
proximately eighteen hundred rural credit associa- 
tions in Denmark and more than twice that number 
in operation in Germany.* In Holland and Belgium 
cooperation for industrial and business purposes 
among the peasant people was also highly developed. 



*See Wolff's Peoples' Banks. 



98 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

By doing their banking and borrowing cooperatively, 
many of the rural people were their own lenders and 
borrowers of money at low rates of interest. They 
knew how to produce and how to market cooper- 
atively. Creameries, canneries, packeries and 
warehouses had been operating successfully under 
the cooperative plan among rural people for a great 
many years. 

In America the case is quite different. Efforts 
at industrial cooperation among farmers seldom 
meet with success. The Grange, the Farmers' 
Alliance, and the Farmers' Union failed to accom- 
plish most of the very worthy things they set out 
to do. As local organizations they have lived and 
flourished in only a few exceptional communities. 

Industrial cooperation among most of the rural 
population of Western Europe seems to be a natural 
and easy thing, but in America it is next to impos- 
sible. Why this great difference? Is it due to 
special legislation enacted at Copenhagen, Berlin, 
Brussels or The Hague? No. Is it due to a 
peculiarly favored economic environment enjoyed 
by the European peasants? Not directly so. It is 
due, in the main, to a difference in social attitude. 

The European peasants are more intimately 
acquainted with one another than the American 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 99 

farmers are. Many of them live in small village 
communities. They see one another every day. 
There is much social life among them. Neighbors 
meet neighbors and have opportunities to exchange 
ideas during their hours of leisure almost every 
evening. The whole environment has a socializing 
tendency. This makes for community-mindedness. 
The people think collectively as well as individually. 
Cooperation follows naturally and easily. 

In most places the rural people of America are 
great strangers to one another. It would mean much 
for community interests in general if friends would 
meet friends and neighbors meet neighbors oftener 
than they ordinarily do. They should get together 
oftener just for the sake of association. An aggre- 
gation of strangers can never make a team of 
community workers. 

A rural-uplift club one time adopted this very 
appropriate slogan: "Come out and get acquainted 
with your neighbor. You may like him." This 
would be an appropriate slogan for most rural com- 
munities in the agricultural South. To have effec- 
tive community team-work in church, school, or civic 
endeavor, people must spend enough time together 
to know one another and catch the spirit of pulling 
together. The lack of easy and continuous social 



100 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

intercourse for country people constitutes one of the 
greatest weaknesses in American rural society. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. The families of best influence are usually 
among the first to leave the country because of unsatis- 
factory social and cultural advantages. What biological 
effect does this likely have on the ones left behind? 
What is the effect on the church and the school ? 

2. Every community has its social center. Where 
is the social center in your community? Name some 
social centers you have seen? Why are barber-shops, 
post-offices, drug-stores and depots so often the centers 
of social exchange in small places ? Would the schools 
and the churches be exceeding their provinces to try 
to remedy these conditions? Why have they not 
already made the attempt? Show that some leisure is 
essential to health and happiness. In what respect are 
leisure hours dangerous hours? 

3. Why is it so dangerous to move a child from 
the country to town at the age of adolescence ? 

4. Give one reason why industrial cooperation 
among the peasants of Western Europe has been more 
successful than among the farmers of America. How 
does the independence and isolation of the American 
farmer act as a barrier against cooperation? 

REFERENCES 

Butterfield, The Country Church and the Rural 
Problem, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 111. 

Fiske, The Challenge of the Country, Association 
Press, New York Citv. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL lOI 

Quick, The Brown Mouse, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 
Indianapolis, Ind. 

Quick, The Fairview Idea, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 
Indianapolis, Ind. 

Wilson, The Church of the Open Country, The 
Pilgrim Press, Boston, Mass. 



CHAPTER VII 
Making Better Citizens 

I. Teachers of Civics Must Get a New Point 
of View. — I found in the white schools of fourteen 
contiguous school districts embracing a rural popula- 
tion of more than thirteen thousand people that only 
one pupil in each seventeen had ever recited a lesson 
in civics. Most of those of free school age had 
dropped out of school before reaching the grade in 
which civics is taught. This does not augur well 
for the future of democracy. The times are dan- 
gerously unsettled. In some quarters the outlook 
is desperate. There is serious need for constructive 
training in citizenship. 

Civics as now taught is not giving that training. 
It is quite unattractive to the mind of the average 
student below college rank. It misses the mark of 
his interests. He cares little about the framework 
of government and the eligibility qualifications of 
officials. What government does, rather than 
what it is, would appeal far more forcefully to him. 
Citizens will do more for their government when 
they understand better what it is doing for them. 

I02 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL IO3 

Cox is my neighbor across the street. He is a 
good citizen because he understands and appreciates 
all the things the government is doing for him. Each 
morning when he arises he washes his face in clear 
water whose purity and freedom from contagion 
are safeguarded by the city. At breakfast he has 
a beefsteak carved from a carcass bearing the blue 
stamp of the federal meat inspector, showing that 
the animal was in good health and fit for human 
food when slaughtered. The milk on the table 
comes from a clean dairy and contains no harmful 
preservatives, for the State Pure Food Department 
sees about that. After breakfast the garbage is 
gathered and put into a receptacle for the city scav- 
enger to carry away, and the dishwater is poured 
into a city-built sewer instead of a disease-breeding 
sink-hole in the back yard. Then he goes to town 
to his office in a building properly lighted and copi- 
ously supplied with fresh air in accordance with 
the building laws. At eleven o'clock he receives 
word that his youngest child is ill and hastily 
summons a doctor licensed by the State Board of 
Medical Examiners, and the doctor issues a prescrip- 
tion to be filled by a pharmacist whose qualifications 
have been attested to by the state. While all this 
is going on, the older children of the family are 



I04 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

away at school under the direction of teachers 
whose eligibility has been certified to by the State 
Department of Education. On the way home from 
school in the afternoon these children are escorted 
over a dangerous street crossing by the hand of a 
friendly policeman. That night neighbor Cox's 
home is saved from complete destruction by the 
speedy and efficient service of the city fire 
department. 

Ten miles in the country, near the Viola school, 
lives friend Brown. He has oranges, bacon, cof- 
fee, sugar, sirup and waffles for breakfast, brought 
to him from five states by the railroads at reason- 
able rates fixed by the Interstate Commerce 
Commission. After breakfast his twelve-year-old 
son gathers up his free text-books and goes to school. 
By ten o'clock the rural free delivery mail has 
arrived. Then friend Brown drives to town with a 
load of cotton over a public highway not so good as 
it should be, it is true, but far better than the primi- 
tive trails his pioneer father traveled. He has his 
cotton weighed by the public weigher on scales that 
are officially correct. During the afternoon, before 
returning home, he calls on his widowed sister, 
whose rights are made secure against violence by 
the protecting law and order of the day ; he applies 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL IO5 

to the courts for redress against some unfairness 
from an insurance company; and he telephones to 
the State Orphans' Home that is caring for two des- 
titute children of a former friend of his. At every 
turn through the day friend Brown is face to face 
with the services his government is rendering him. 
Conscious recognition of what the government 
is doing for them makes better citizens of neighbor 
Cox and friend Brown. Neighbor Cox contributes 
his proportional part of the tax for the support of 
his government and does it ungrudgingly. He was 
an active factor in getting the city government 
changed from the old ward-aldermanic plan to the 
commission plan. Friend Brown is using his influ- 
ence with the electorate at Viola to have capable 
men put into state and county offices. Personally, 
he does not like the present road commissioner, but 
he voted for him because he knows he is honest and 
understands scientific road-building. Efficiency 
and honesty are the major requirements of those 
for whom he casts his vote and influence. He 
never helps promote a man to office merely because 
he happens to be a good fellow or an old friend. 
He regards the interests of the public as a thousand- 
fold more sacred than the political ambitions of 
even his best friend. 



I06 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Teachers of civics and writers of civics texts 
must get a new point of view. They must teach gov- 
ernment in the Hght of what it is doing. The study 
of its structure and of what it aims to do is insuffi- 
cient. Lessons on the Constitution are not getting 
close enough to home. The activities of the local 
units of government at Birmingham, Podunk and 
Centerville are of more immediate interest. 

2. The Half-Patriotic Citizen — Good men and 
good citizens are not synonymous. Many good 
men are very poor citizens. One moderately good 
man moved his funds from an Austin bank to the 
village of Rockdale to avoid the payment of city 
taxes. The city has paved the streets and keeps 
them swept and sprinkled for his comfort. He 
sends his children to the city schools. On evenings 
he attends free lectures in the school auditorium and 
free concerts in the city park. He uses city water 
and city lights. He accepts and enjoys the refining 
atmosphere of a delightful civilization. But he 
declines to pay his part of the bills. He is a scab 
on the body politic, and his more thoughtful neigh- 
bors silently regard him with loathing disgust. 
Were he aware of the smallness of his shriveled 
soul and the low esteem in which he is held by ob- 
serving, thinking people, he would not make false 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 10/ 

renditions of his personal property by hiding away 
vendor's hen notes, bonds and bank accounts when 
the tax assessor calls to see him. Had he known 
how all the best people felt toward him, he would 
have contributed to the Red Cross and subscribed 
punctually for his quota of liberty bonds instead of 
lagging behind, as he did, thinking, "Maybe I shall 
get by unobserved," until one day he was called 
before the committee and the reasons demanded for 
his unpatriotic indifference. Then he gave a small 
pittance to the Red Cross and bought bonds spar- 
ingly merely to avoid being branded a slacker. Still, 
he is no bad man, as present-day moral standards 
go. He belongs to the church, attends to his own 
affairs, meets his business obligations when they 
come due, and provides liberally for his family. 

But the covetous man is not the only poor citizen 
within the ranks of moderately good people. There 
are the careless fellows. One of them butchered 
a hog and allowed the blood and offal to be thrown 
into the lake, which is the city's source of water 
supply. Schoolboys throw their left-over fish bait 
into the water to putrefy and pollute it, and picnic 
parties take boat excursions up the lake and cast 
the remnants of their luncheon overboard without a 
word of protest from the chaperons. The man who 



I08 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

saw the contractor cheating the county by putting an 
inferior grade of cement into the construction of a 
culvert did not report it to the civil authorities. A 
heavy rain washed the dirt off the clay tiling in a 
gulley near a farmer's house and he saw it every 
day, but he did not inform the road commissioner 
about it until long after the weight of passing traffic 
had so damaged the tiling that it was a total loss to 
the county. A teacher and three country school 
trustees have permitted the school's library books to 
be carried away and the school furniture to be dam- 
aged by campers and interlopers because they have 
neglected keeping the schoolhouse doors locked. A 
county home for the indigent is wreaking with filth 
and vermin, but no one seeks to have it remedied. 
Prisoners are stricken with tuberculosis in a dark un- 
ventilated jail and are underfed by the one who has 
contracted with the county to board them, but citizen 
Jones, a good man, who knows about it, sits by and 
says nothing. And so the instances of civic care- 
lessness and negligence might be extended in- 
definitely. 

Why all this civic unconcern? How may it be 
corrected. I think that the fault is partly that of the 
public schools and must be corrected in part 
through them. The twentieth-century public 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL IO9 

schools, both rural and urban, must concern them- 
selves more deeply with the production of a vigilant, 
useful citizenry. Our nation is passing through 
one of the most critical periods in its history. If 
it is made safe for democracy, the public school must 
do it. 

We have those rankling in our midst who regard 
law^ and government as their worst enemy. Many 
low-bred foreigners have poured into our land. 
The only government that they knew was a govern- 
ment of repression. They brought that conception 
with them and have retained it. To them, freedom 
means freedom from restraint. They are incapable 
of regarding government as a helpful, uplifting 
force. Worse still, among many of the native-born 
in our Southland there still lives the obsolete doctrine 
that the government that governs least governs best. 
The old idea of government as a restricting force 
must be overcome. The sheriff and the policeman 
are not my enemies, but my friends and protectors. 
The jail is not a pubhc monument to excite fear in 
me, but a place to retain the mad man who would 
do me violence on the street and the criminal who 
wantonly breaks the laws made for my protection. 
Our people must be given a different conception of 
the significance of government to them. 



no THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

3. Good Citizens Must Be Thrifty Citizens. — 
A teacher sent a pair of his cast-off shoes to the 
repair shop for new soles and new heels. His 
ill-shaped hat went to the hatter the same day for 
re-blocking and a new band. They were returned 
almost as good as new. He wore them to school 
and made them the subject of his semi-weekly thrift 
talk. In part, he said : "The world's stock of man- 
ufactured goods was badly depleted during the war. 
There are possibly fewer pairs of men's shoes in the 
world to-day than ever before in my lifetime. The 
same thing is likely true of men's hats, civilian 
suits, and many of the other standard necessities of 
life. Scarcity has made them all high-priced. This 
rehabilitated hat and pair of shoes saved me the 
expenditure of nearly twenty dollars. But that is 
not the biggest thing. Now it is not necessary for 
me to go draw out one new hat and one new pair of 
shoes from the world's supply. I have left them on 
the shelves at the hat store and the shoe store for 
other people. In reality, I have added one hat and 
one pair of shoes to the world's supply of hats and 
shoes. If five million men would do that to-mor- 
row, there would be five million more wearable hats 
and pairs of shoes in the world. That would tend 
to bring down the prices of hats and shoes. The 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL III 

more there is of a commodity, the lower its price. 
If we would fight the high cost of living effec- 
tively and put prices on the downward trend, we 
must do it by producing and saving. This is no 
time for idleness and wastefulness. The world is 
hungry and half clad. There is work for all hands 
to do." 

His pupils saw the point. It was no trouble to 
organize a thrift society. They went in for economy 
and saving. Most of them have since opened small 
bank-accounts. Some of them have pigs, calves 
and small flocks of poultry to call their own. 
Others sell papers, mow lawns and do messenger 
service after school that they may add to their sav- 
ings accounts. They are all making a great fight 
on extravagance and wastefulness. 

It is hard for the penniless man to be a valuable cit- 
izen. It is almost as difficult for the prodigal child 
of wealth. Mendicancy and lavish opulence are con- 
trary to the spirit of democracy. The almstaker and 
the spendthrift have no place in our social order. 
Both should be taught the lessons of frugaHty and 
industry. The American's mania for spending 
money is a dangerous thing. It is a disease afflict- 
ing tramp and millionaire alike. There is serious 
need for practical instruction in thrift and economy. 



112 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. Is the Constitution of the United States an inter- 
esting subject of study for the average pupil below 
college rank ? To which will the average pupil respond 
with the greater interest: a study of governmental 
structure or a study of what the government is actually 
accomplishing for his benefit? Make a list of fifty 
helpful things your government is doing for you 
to-day. If your pupils and patrons had an adequate 
conception of what the government is doing for them, 
would it make better citizens of them? Would it 
cause them to take a more active interest in having 
capable persons put into office ? Which candidates did 
you vote for in the last election, those who were your 
close personal friends or those best qualified to hold 
the offices they sought? 

2. Is it possible for a man to be a good man and a 
poor citizen? Do you know any persons who have 
evaded the payment of their taxes by hiding away 
certain portions of their wealth from the tax assessor? 
At heart, are they patriots or slackers ? Give instances 
of individuals guilty of civic carelessness. Art there 
any marks of civic neglect about your school premises 
or in the interior of your school building? Do your 
pupils regard government as a restraining agency or 
as a helpful, uplifting force ? Do you have any pupils 
whose parents are foreign-born and un-American 
in spirit? 

3. How will economy and production tend to 
restore the present high prices to their pre-war levels? 
Is thriftlessness compatible with good citizenship? 
Are you trying to teach lessons of thrift and industry 
in your school? 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL II3 

REFERENCES 

Allen, Universal Training for Citizenship and Pub- 
lic Service, Macmillan Company, New York City. 

Bennion, Citizenship, World Book Company, 
Yonkers-On-Hudson, N. Y. 

Curtis, Play and Recreation for the Open Country, 
Macmillan Company, New York City. 

Lapp, Our American — The Elements of Civics, The 
Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, Ind. 

Smith, Our Neighborhood, The John C. Winston 
Company, Chicago, 111. 

Turkington, Our Country, Ginn and Company, 
Boston, Mass. 

U. S. Bureau of Education, The Teaching of Com- 
munity Civics, Bulletin 191 5, No. 23, Washington, D. C. 

Ziegler and Jaquette, Our Community, The John C. 
Winston Company, Chicago, 111. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Community Idea in Public Education 

I. The Public Schoors New Perspective 

When the data is all in and the last chapter in the 
history of American education has been written, the 
advent of the community idea in the first half of 
the twentieth century will mark the beginning of 
one of its greatest epochs. The free school of the 
future will recognize Public Opportunity as the in- 
separable handmaid and companion of scholarship. 
It will be as generous in its opportunities to the in- 
dustrial masses as to those aspiring to college gradu- 
ation and professional careers. Those children 
turned back into the great army of industrial work- 
ers will be given an equal chance with those inter- 
ested in the gentler callings of life. 

Most of the free schools of the past have granted 
free tuition rather than free and equal opportunity 
to all in attendance. In traditions and habits they 
have been the unfortunate victims of the colleges 
and academies from which most of their ideals and 
methods of instruction have descended. The first 
of the American colleges were organized and dedi- 

114 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL II5 

cated to learning. They stood for scholarship and 
for the preparation of young men for the liberal 
professions : law, medicine, politics and the ministry. 
When the privileges of education were more gener- 
ally extended and the public free schools began to 
develop, much was taken into their programs of 
study from the academies and colleges. And many 
of the public schools have never been able to break 
away from those old examples. Notwithstanding 
all the recent efforts to the contrary, they continue 
to educate just as though all their pupils were headed 
straight for the colleges and the professions. The 
university degree, the teacher's certificate, and the 
doctor's diploma symbolize the kind of education 
dealt in by many public school-teachers not yet en- 
joying the broader vision that the idea of community 
service gives. 

The community-service school has a new educa- 
tional perspective. In its picture of life's oppor- 
tunities domestic and industrial usefulness are given 
a place of prominence and beauty by the side of the 
distant goal of success dedicated to the recondite 
professions. To the many not inclined to scholastic 
thought or desirous of professional attainments it 
will point out the way of usefulness, contentment 
and efficiency in the community where they reside, 



Il6 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

by teaching them better how to live and how to put 
their productive talents to profitable use. For the 
few with exceptional abilities it will provide ade- 
quate opportunities, encouraging them at all times 
to finish their educations and, when possible, return 
from college and cast their lots for a life of useful- 
ness among the home people. 

A young man almost ready to graduate from 
college was asked what he meant to do after com- 
pleting the course. "I'm going home and run for 
office," was his prompt reply. After his questioner 
had rebuked him good-naturedly, he said: ''Yes, 
but you do not understand me. I have seen a great 
many things the last two or three years. I have 
not been in any of the professions, but I have been 
pretty close to some of them. I have never been to 
the top in anything, but I have been to where I 
could see the top. And don't you know, I have 
just about decided that the biggest thing left in life 
for the college young man of average ability is to 
go back home and run for the office of good citizen. 
I mean to go back to my home people and possibly 
be elected to some minor office : school trustee, road 
overseer, Sunday-school superintendent, or maybe 
foreman of the grand jury. In short, I want to go 
back home and be a leader and benefactor among 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL II J 

my people. I want my house and my barns to be 
models of comfort and beauty. I want them to 
be object lessons for others. And I want the best 
live stock and the best field crops that can be pro- 
duced anywhere, to be found on my place." 

A generation of young men like this young fellow 
would afford our nation a body of educators, 
statesmen and social reformers much greater and 
more capable than it has thus far been able to pro- 
duce. The rural South needs one hundred thousand 
like him to-day. He is at present a practical 
statesman in the affairs of his home community. 
This laboratory practise in that thrifty little center 
is giving him an unerring insight into yet broader 
fields of public welfare. He is doing his post- 
graduate work in constructive philanthropy among 
the people where he grew up. Indeed, his concepts 
of public usefulness were first acquired in the vil- 
lage school at home before he went away to college. 

This small school with its program of public 
opportunity and community service points with 
pride to the number of men and women of usefulness 
and good influence it has been able to develop and 
retain at home to help make that community a better 
place for people to live. When a young man full 
of promise and endowed with good ability leaves the 



Il8 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

community not to return, his going is looked on as 
a serious and irreparable loss. The principal of the 
school contends that there are opportunities at home 
just as attractive as those abroad and that it is the 
duty of the school to point the way to them. And 
when it fails to do so, discontentment is sure to arise 
in the minds of the most ambitious young people. 

This man often deplores the gage of success set 
by so many superintendents who do but little 
more than graduate pupils by preparing them for 
college entrance and then congratulating them- 
selves on what they have done. They keep long 
rosters of their pupils who have gone to the univer- 
sity and made teachers, lawyers, doctors and civil 
engineers, but lose sight of those valuable private 
citizens who have been equally successful as 
mechanics, farmers and stockmen despite the lack 
of encouragement given them by the schools they 
attended. In the new school, whose chief desire is 
community service and opportunity for all, the 
teacher will not evaluate his success by the number 
of pupils sent into the professions so much as by the 
number who are playing a man's part in the home 
township. His greatest pride will center around 
those successful persons he has inspired to find a 
satisfactory life-work at home, rather than around 
those he has directed into other adventures. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL IIQ 

When that day comes, the South will not suffer 
for want of capable leaders, nor will our institutions 
of higher learning be at a loss for want of desirable 
human material for their student bodies. In fact, 
the students from this new type of school will be 
older and far more substantial in their purposes and 
ideals than the immature young group now inherited 
each year from the present system of high schools. 

2. Redirected Instruction in the Common Sub- 
jects. — In all subjects the instruction given will 
be more closely related to the practical duties of 
Hfe. It will be simple, concrete and practical, 
rather than abstract, technical and mysterious. It 
will touch life as the average pupil knows it. Pupils 
will be taught how to get along in the world, and 
they will remain in school longer for that reason. 
There will be a noticeable reduction in the number of 
discouraged ones leaving school fitted for nothing 
in particular. 

In arithmetic the problems of measurement and 
business accounting will be taught so as to apply to 
the problems of the farm. The farmer boy who 
knows how to calculate the whole cost of producing 
a fat hog, a bale of cotton, or a bushel of peanuts 
can hardly be found to-day. The farmer who can 
tell you how much he made last year is the very 



I20 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

rarest exception indeed. Housewives are equally 
as ignorant of the principles of household account- 
ing. But the new school will have more to do with 
the costs of menus, the expense of maintaining the 
work animals on the farm, and the profits paid by 
the dairy cows and the poultry yard. 

In physiology and hygiene the lessons will have 
much to do with food values, home sanitation, and 
properly balanced rations for the family and for the 
farm animals. The proper housing and feeding of 
calves, colts, pigs and chickens will be closely cor- 
related with the lessons on ventilation and dietetics. 
The screens, the kitchen sink, the proper handling 
of milk and butter, the sterilizing power of direct 
sunlight, and the value of the sleeping porch will 
not be overlooked. The eyes of the instructors will 
be on the homes and the environment of the pupils. 
The lessons, demonstrations and analogies will 
cause many new improvements, making farm homes 
more comfortable places in which to live. The new 
instruction in physiology will influence the living 
habits of people, whereas the study of human anat- 
omy and the imaginary conceptions of the forms 
and functions of a few bones and the organs of the 
body have practically failed in the past. 

History will have less to do with wars, battles. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 121 

generals and presidents, none of which the pupils 
have ever seen, and more to do with current events, 
and the local affairs of the school district, the 
county and the state. Language and general 
science will be so correlated that each will give an 
additional interest to the other, and both will be 
given new powers for the improvement of the habits 
of thought and speech among the pupils. 

3. The Public School Exists for People of All 
Ages — Education in the past has dealt almost ex- 
clusively with the individual and with the scholastic 
group. Just there the American elementary and 
secondary schools have fallen short. It is a fal- 
lacious idea that one's education is complete as soon 
as his school-days are over. The new school pro- 
vides for the people of all ages. It is a continuation 
school for the social and mental improvement of 
pupils, parents and grown young people. It is 
reaching those not in school through the farmers' 
club, lyceum, community fair and various other 
educational agencies. 

The new school is giving much attention to the 
art and science of housekeeping. Modern household 
equipment has made scientific training for house- 
keeping necessary. The fireless cooker, the dust- 
less sweeper, the refrigerator, the oil stove, the 



122 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

kitchen sink, bath tub and septic tank require scien- 
tific intelHgence on the part of the housekeeper. This 
intelligence dignifies the idea of home. Joined 
with the right appreciation of the artistic and the 
beautiful, it serves to make a home a home instead 
of a mere place of residence. Better homes always 
mean much for community life of a higher order. 
Decent homes are essential to decent citizenship. 

4. The New School Will Have a New Teacher. 
— Confining the work of education to groups of 
immature children has been conducive to unpar- 
donable academic narrowness on the part of many 
teachers. It has caused many men and women in 
the school-room to deteriorate into petty discipli- 
narians and dogmatic text-book interpreters. But 
the advent of the community-service idea in educa- 
tion marks the beginning of a new era in educational 
practises. The social, cultural and industrial wants 
of the community are being committed more and 
more to the guardianship of the school. This is 
calling for courageous initiative and decisive leader- 
ship from the ranks of the teachers. It is generating 
a new type of teacher. This new teacher has the 
combined abilities of "community manager," "social 
engineer" and educator. Our normal schools and 
universities, naturally conservative, must wake up 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I23 

and hear the country's call for this type of teacher. 
They have turned out too many academic weaklings 
in the past who can not measure up to the tests and 
practical requirements of this new day. 

5. The New School Will Have the Moral and 
Financial Support of the People. — The complaint 
is often made that the public schools are not prop- 
erly supported. In many instances this is very 
true. But it is equally as true that some of them 
are supported as well as they deserve to be. Con- 
sidering the character of service rendered, it is 
astounding that many of our public schools are sup- 
ported as well as they are. We can not expect the 
support given the school by the home and the com- 
munity to be in a greater degree than the service 
rendered by the school to them. When our schools 
come to concern themselves more with the every-day 
affairs of the home and the community, the people 
will rally more enthusiastically to their aid and 
maintenance. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

I. Discuss some of the influences the colleges have 
had on the public schools. Wherein lies the error of 
regarding the public school as a preparatory school 
for the college ? Which pupils have received the more 
favors from the public schools, those with college 



124 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

ambitions or those with domestic and business inclina- 
tions ? Does free tuition always mean a free and equal 
opportunity for all the pupils in attendance? If pupils 
were taught more about how to get along in the world, 
would they remain in school longer for that reason? 
Why do so many public school superintendents seem 
inclined to measure their success by the number of 
students they have graduated and sent away to college, 
rather than by the number they have turned back into 
the home community to lead lives of practical useful- 
ness as valuable private citizens ? 

2. Have you acquired the habit and the ability of 
making your instruction in the school subjects simple, 
concrete and practical, or do you teach in terms that 
are abstract, technical and foreign to the minds of 
your pupils? Which do you teach, lessons or books? 
Distinguish between a teacher and a text-book 
interpreter. 

3. Should the school exist for children only, or for 
the people of all ages ? Why has scientific information 
become so necessary for modern housekeeping? 
Distinguish between a home and a place of residence. 
Should we expect the support given by the home to 
the school to be in a greater degree than the services 
rendered by the school to the home? 

4. Show that the successful teacher in the large 
centralized rural school of the twentieth century must 
have the combined abilities of "community manager," 
''social engineer" and educator. 

5. Why will the new school receive the moral and 
the financial support of all the people? 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I25 

REFERENCES 

Carney, Country Life and the Country School, Row, 
Peterson and Company, Chicago. 

Betts and Hall, Better Rural Schools, The Bobbs- 
Merrill Company, Indianapolis, Ind. 

Cubberly, Rural Life and Education, Sturgis and 
Walton Company, New York City. 

Eggleston and Bruere, The Work of the Rural 
School, Harper and Brothers, New York City. 

Fiske, The Challenge of the Country, Association 
Press, New York City. 

Foght, The American Rural School, The Macmillan 
Company, New York City. 

Kern, Among Country Schools, Ginn and Company. 
New York City. 



CHAPTER IX 

Twentieth-Century Salaries For Twentieth- 
Century Teachers in Rural and Village 
Communities 

Two years ago the best paid principal of a seven- 
teacher school in Texas received a salary of two 
thousand dollars, a comfortable home, and the use 
of thirty acres of good farming land. This was 
easily the equivalent of a three thousand dollar 
salary. So far as I know, the best paid principal 
of a four-teacher school in Texas this year receives 
a salary of eighteen hundred dollars, a neat five- 
room bungalow to live in, and the use of ten acres 
of choice farming land. This is easily the equiva- 
lent of a salary of twenty-two hundred and fifty 
dollars. 

I have conducted some research into the question 
of rural and village teachers' salaries in Texas the 
last five years. Whenever I have learned of a 
teacher's receiving a phenomenal salary, I have 
sought the reasons for it. 1 have analyzed local 
conditions and school functions as carefully and 
scientifically as I could. Some cases I have found 

126 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL \2J 

due to highly favorable local conditions. Those, T 
have not carried into my series of critical observa- 
tions. For example, the Pharr-San-Juan District 
in the lower Rio Grande Valley pays the principal 
three thousand six hundred dollars per year. 
That is in part the outcome of special advantages 
enjoyed by that particular locality on the irrigation 
canals with as rich agricultural land as there is in 
the world and a very highly aggressive citizenship. 
But where I have found a case situated in an en- 
vironment typical of any very considerable portion 
of the state, I have given it a careful analysis. 

I. A Twentieth- Century Village Teacher. — The 
seven-teacher school previously mentioned as paying 
a salary of two thousand dollars to its principal is 
located in a sawmill village in East Texas. In the 
pines of Texas and Louisiana there are scores of 
villages just like it. And, as a class, I have found 
no men more loyal in the support of public educa- 
tion than the sawmill owners. They seldom oppose 
a school tax or decline to supply the school with all 
the building material necessary at actual cost of 
production. 

When I went to this school to make a critical 
appraisal of its interests and activities, here are 
some of the things I found. The principal had been 



128 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

there four years. He began at a salary of eleven 
hundred and fifty dollars. Later he received fifteen 
hundred dollars. At the end of the third year he 
was tendered an attractive position elsewhere at 
eighteen hundred dollars. But the home people 
were unwiUing to part with him and raised his 
salary to two thousand dollars. 

One of the first things to attract my attention at 
this school was the miniature silo. It was filled 
with good sweet ensilage made from Indian corn 
grown on the school farm. The boys produced the 
corn, harvested it and converted it into silage. 
They had kept careful accounts of the cost of pro- 
duction and knew the feeding value of the finished 
product. 

The school farm contained three acres of land. 
Part of this land was very rolling and had been 
beautifully terraced. The beauty of the terraces 
consisted in their proper location and scientific con- 
struction. They were given a drop of one inch to 
every twenty feet of distance. The members of the 
agriculture class were as familiar with the uses of 
the terracing level as they were with the rules of 
compound numbers in arithmetic. Several of the 
older boys had laid off the terraces on their fathers' 
farms with the school terracing level. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 29 

The Babcock milk tester was also seeing service. 
The milk of many of the cows in the community 
had been tested. It had been discovered that some 
of them gave milk of a very poor quality. The 
unprofitable ones were being sold and replaced by 
better ones. Other articles of equipment in the small 
agricultural and animal husbandry laboratory were 
microscopes, soil thermometers, fertilizers, spraying 
mixtures, seed testers, test-tubes, beakers, balances, 
etc. This school was intelligently adapting its 
program of instruction to the industrial needs of 
that community in a state of transition from the 
virgin pines to applied agriculture. 

A short distance from the main building were 
two small rooms equipped with ranges, tables and 
other appliances for teaching the girls home 
economics. There they received instruction in 
home sanitation, home beautification, and household 
accounting. This work gave an effective union of 
theory and practise in the domestic arts. The girls 
were not only taught the value of a balanced ration 
and the principles of menu-making, but they had 
real practise in the best methods of preparing and 
serving food. 

The school campus consisted of five acres of land 
well supplied with playground apparatus. Its chief 



130 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

attractions were swings, giant strides, see-saws, a 
race course, and courts for tennis, basketball and 
baseball. The playground, with all its modern 
accommodations, constituted part of the working 
equipment of this school just as much as the 
books the children studied and the seats they occu- 
pied. Its purpose was to connect many of the 
lessons of the class-room with the actual duties and 
relationships of life in definite practise. 

In addition to the industrial instruction and the 
playground activities were the agencies for social 
and cultural recreation. Story-telling, music, 
dramatics and social-center meetings produced an 
exuberant good fellowship in the community as all- 
embracing as the very atmosphere itself. The male 
quartette, choral club, Victrola, dramatic entertain- 
ments, piano concerts, and story-tellers' evenings 
were the sources of profitable, vivacious pastime 
for the entire population. Socially, the biggest 
thing in the village was the school and its allied 
activities. 

This school had a real twentieth-century vision of 
the duties and functions of a public school in a vil- 
lage like that. Its primary purpose was to make 
valuable citizens and community builders of those 
in attendance. Its chief concern was with the 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I3I 

ninety per cent, or so of its pupils who will never 
go to college or enter any of the professions, but 
will remain, for the most part, among the home- 
builders and industrial producers of the next 
generation. 

2. A Twentieth- Century Country Teacher. — 
Two years ago I visited the country school taught 
by the man who was the best paid country teacher 
in Texas in 19 19. During the two days I was 
there, here are some of the things I learned. A 
consolidation of three small schools had been made 
three years prior to my visit. There were one 
hundred and eight white children in the enlarged 
district with four teachers employed to instruct 
them. The country was sparsely settled, and some 
of the pupils lived as far as seven miles from school. 
Most of them came to school on horseback, in bug- 
gies and in automobiles. One Ford car was 
operated at public expense for the transporting of 
pupils to and from school. 

At the time of my visit, the school had ten acres 
of land, six buildings and a windmill. The build- 
ings were the principal's home, a home for the 
three women teachers, the tool-house, a barn for 
the horses the children drove and rode to school, 
the main school building and the auditorium. The 



132 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

main building is of gray brick. It contains two 
halls and five class-rooms. The auditorium is a 
frame building with a capacity of five hundred 
people. 

One and one-half acres of the land were under 
irrigation, and one and one-fourth acres were 
devoted to dry-farming projects. The water for 
irrigation was pumped into the storage tank by the 
windmill. The land under irrigation was planted 
to onions and Irish potatoes. Onions are one of 
the principal money crops of Southwest Texas, 
where this school is located. It was not known that 
Irish potatoes could be successfully grown in that 
frontier locality until demonstrated by the school. 
I was there in March, 191 7. The onions and 
potatoes were to be harvested in May and the land 
planted to tepary beans, peanuts and broomcorn. 
This second crop was to be harvested and followed 
with fall garden stuff in October. The object was 
to keep the land producing a crop of some sort 
throughout the entire year. 

The individual plats of onions were forty by 
sixty feet in size. There were sixteen of them. 
Some of the best ones made as much as forty dol- 
lars' worth of onions. One-half of the net proceeds 
went to the boys who cultivated them and the other 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 33 

half to the school. This not only gave the boys 
practise in the methods of cultivation and the uses 
of fertilizers, but gave them some very valuable 
lessons in farm bookkeeping', knowledge greatly 
needed by most farmers in the South. 

Among these individual plats of onions and 
potatoes you could see good farming and poor farm- 
ing very sharply contrasted. Some of them were 
the evident products of slovenliness and lack of 
industry. You did not have to travel all over the 
entire community to gather examples of successful 
and unsuccessful farming. Every degree of suc- 
cess and failure, from the best to the worst, was 
concentrated on the school farm. The causes for 
each were well-known. The object lesson was a 
most forceful one. It meant as much to the com- 
munity at large as it did to the school. In fact, 
its purpose was to benefit the community. 

During the previous four years this small school 
farm had given a powerful impetus to home gar- 
dening among the patrons of the school. It had 
demonstrated what could be done at home with a 
windmill and a small plat of ground down in that 
semi-arid portion of the state where windmills are 
a universal farm and ranch appliance. The plan 
then was to set aside a small area of the school 



134 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

land for berries and vegetables and make it a prac- 
tical working model for an all-the-year-round home 
garden. 

The unirrigated plat of land was devoted to dry- 
farming projects. Fall breaking, dust mulching 
and conservation of moisture were being practised. 

Some of the industrial projects at home were as 
interesting and as valuable as the school projects. 
Eight boys had produced two thousand pounds of 
pork at a cost of three and one-half cents per pound. 
Four champion ''baby" beeves had been grown by 
the schoolboys. 

This school also recognized that industrial educa- 
tion was as necessary for its girls as for its boys. 
A more competent generation of farmers would be 
unfortunate without a more competent generation 
of farmers' wives to assist them. Consequently, a 
school laboratory for training for efficiency in the 
home had been equipped and put into use. It con- 
tained three sewing-machines, two oil stoves, and 
numerous minor laboratory accessories. Here it 
was that the girls made their graduating dresses, and 
were taught many valuable lessons in household 
accounting, food preparation and home sanitation. 
They were given credit for making their graduating 
dresses and the costumes for the cantata at the 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I35 

close of school the same as for the rest of their 
school work. Indeed, they were graded on their 
sewing and on the fitting of garments just as crit- 
ically as they were graded on their lessons in history 
and in English composition. 

While the school was actively identifying itself 
with the industrial needs of its patrons, it had made 
itself equally as responsive to their social and 
recreational needs. The auditorium was the com- 
munity's playhouse. The school, being in the open 
country and fifteen miles from the railroad, was 
obligated all the more bindingly to provide a modi- 
cum of social recreation for these young people and 
their parents. The male quartette, Victrola con- 
certs, plays, drills, stories and informal social 
gatherings contributed to this end. Through the 
Victrola the pupils had heard the voices of Presi- 
dent Wilson and Premier Lloyd George. They 
had heard most of the great artists of the world sing 
and play. Gluck, McCormick and Kreisler were 
among their favorites. 

Why this remarkable school in that particular 
section of the thorns and cacti of Southwest Texas ? 
It was due to no large concentration of wealth or 
other specially favored conditions. In topog- 
raphy, population and industry the locality is 



136 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

typical of most of the country in that vast frontier 
empire extending from San Antonio to Del Rio, 
Brownsville and Corpus Christi. The success of 
this school is attributable in the main to the vision 
and energies of one man — the principal of the 
school. 

This man taught for several years in the small- 
town schools of the state. But he saw a more 
desirable opportunity in the country. He went to 
the country to be an active rural-life leader and 
community-builder. He has succeeded in what he 
set out to do. 

Our Southland could use twenty thousand 
teachers like this man. But leaders with the clear 
vision of rural needs and rural possibilities, and 
with the engaging personality that compels people 
to follow, are seldom found among the country 
teachers of to-day. And most distressing of all, we 
can not hope for any considerable number of them 
in the near future to come from our institutions of 
higher learning, both church and state, now engaged 
in the business of training teachers. Before these 
institutions can impart the vision of present-day 
rural possibilities to others, they themselves must 
first get the vision and grant it a fair chance to 
function in their curricula. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 37 

3. The Threefold Function of Rural and Village 
Schools in the Twentieth Century. — If I correctly 
interpret the rural and village schools that are satis- 
fying the public best and receiving the most liberal 
and loyal support from the public in return, their 
activities center around three definite groups of 
interests: viz., academic interests, industrial inter- 
ests, and social and recreational interests. Whereas 
the school of yesterday was primarily academic in 
its aim and its course of study, the new school is all 
that and much more. It ministers to all the vital 
needs of the community. The new teacher is the so- 
cial and industrial light as well as the intellectual 
light among the people he serves. He is far bigger 
and broader than the wizened pedagogue saturated 
with the usual stock of academic facts and ideals ac- 
quired at college. 

For men and women with the education and 
aptitude for discovering and meeting cultural, 
recreational and industrial needs in the country, 
there is a most enviable opportunity in the South 
to-day. It is an opportunity for the person who 
knows "how to work in the open where the people 
are" and elucidate truth in terms familiar to them. 
It is an extremely vital field of educational endeavor 
for the person with an acute social sense and the 



138 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

faculty of doing things with zeal and with 
enthusiasm. 

Born of necessity, the demands of the twentieth 
century will raise up a new type of teacher. This 
new teacher will establish a more vital contact 
between intellectual achievement and industrial and 
social training. He will refuse to "sit tight" in the 
class-room while life, industry and action beckon 
from the outside. He will align his services more 
closely with the lives and needs of his people, and 
they will respect him and compensate him liberally 
for it. 

4. The Fundamental Reason for Starvation 
Salaries for Country Teachers. — A county superin- 
tendent took me to what he said was the "most 
forward-looking four-teacher school" in his county. 
After a lad of fifteen had finished telling me about 
milk testing, tgg testing, infertile eggs, farm ter- 
racing and how to calculate the capacity of a silo, 
he told me about some of the things back at home. 
He said : "Why, don't you know. Dad nearly had 
fits when they voted the school tax here four years 
ago. He quit his work to fight the election for a 
whole week, and the ridin' he gave his ole mule 
hurt it worse 'an any week's work it got all sum- 
mer. But Dad's for the school now. He's out 
with another fellow to-day tryin' to raise money so 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I39 

school can go on another month longer. He thinks 
the new school is worth the price." 

And that school was worth the price. All the 
people in the community knew it- I am convinced 
that our country people as a whole are not averse 
to remunerating teachers liberally when they see 
they are worth the pay. The principals and the 
teachers of the two schools I have mentioned were 
paid handsome salaries because the people believed 
in the sort of education they stood for. I could 
give other examples of the same kind. But the 
average rural school of to-day with its trite academic 
lore is far less appealing to the average layman. 
He regards it with indifference. He supports it 
reluctantly. In the light of these facts, I have been 
driven to this discomforting conclusion: The con- 
suming public is now paying just about as much as 
it ever will pay for the sort of product the average 
public school is putting on the market. Salaries 
will be advanced when the product is improved. 
Until then, I see no hope for any very substantial 
raise. Raising tax rates and property valuations is 
merely scratching on the surface of the issue. That 
will help some, but it will not correct the funda- 
mental evil. The schools theniselves must have a 
rebirth. The people will foot the bills when they 
see that the returns justify the outlay. 



140 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

I left the public school when I was fourteen years 
old. I could not see that what went on there was 
worth my time. I am still not quite sure but that 
I was right about it. If I had it to do over, I sus- 
pect that I should do the same thing again. Every 
year thousands of boys do just as I did. One of the 
most distressing things about our country schools 
is that they are filled with little boys and little girls. 
The big boys and big girls have deserted them. 
Their lack of interest is contagious. It spreads to 
parents and patrons. It generates half-hearted 
school support. But the redirected school is retain- 
ing a larger percentage of older pupils. It is doing 
it by teaching more of those things and championing 
more of those interests and activities that have a 
direct bearing on life. 

The public school said to me: 'Take this. You 
need it. It will be good for you." I was not con- 
sulted. Neither were my parents nor our neighbors. 
So I conjugated verbs, memorized long lists of 
dates, learned the names of most of the bones in the 
human skeleton, taxed my young mind with a great 
deal of other semi-useless information, and supposed 
that I was being educated. But in time I grew skep- 
tical about it. The relationship between all these 
things and the road to success and a life of useful- 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I4I 

ness was too vague and nebulous for my youthful 
acceptance. One fine morning I revolted and did 
not go to school. I now recall that most of my con- 
temporaries in school in that unpretentious country 
community did just about as I did. And the trag- 
edy of it is that their interests in education seem to 
have been permanently dampened. Only one of the 
entire number is an active school worker to-day. 
This one is cashier in the bank and president of 
the school board in a village of one thousand pop- 
ulation. I spent a night in his home not long ago. 
He said to me : ''All the teachers in our school are 
either normal-school graduates or college graduates, 
but they are missing the mark of our needs. Most 
of the instruction they give my children is formal 
as can be, and, I fear, not worth very much after 
all. I think a great deal of it is just about as waste- 
ful of their time as the studies of Greek and higher 
mathematics were to me the three years I was in 
college." Why the bad taste in this intelligent 
man's mouth? Will he vote for a liberal increase 
in the salaries of those teachers next year? 

The purchasing public likes up-to-date goods. 
It pays liberally for attractive articles that can be 
used to practical advantage. But the finished 
products of our normal schools are very poor sellers. 



142 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Surely they are not meeting the tastes and cheerful 
approval of the public, else they would bring better 
prices. To say the least, there is an under-produc- 
tion of men like the two well-paid principals I have 
mentioned. The dies and lasts of our normal 
schools and university departments of education are 
turning out very few of their kind. These archaic 
institutions are in dire need of new machinery and 
modern equipment for that purpose. They would 
do well to make room for it. 

Tracing the causes of the small salaries for 
teachers to their ultimate sources, I am persuaded 
that no small portion of them reside in the very 
conservative practises of our institutions of higher 
learning engaged in the business of training teachers. 
Before our rural and village schools can be sub- 
stantially reformed and given a generation of 
teachers who have seen the new light, a reform 
must first come in the conservative hves of our 
institutions higher up. 

5. An Overlooked Opportunity. — One of the 
teacher's best opportunities for service and financial 
remuneration in the entire public school system is 
in our better rural and village agricultural com- 
munities. It is an overlooked opportunity that has 
been seen by only a few men and women of fore- 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I43 

sight and educational vision far in advance of the 
accepted school-room practises of our day. For 
the teacher who is fully as big as the job, it is 
an opportunity far more desirable in many ways 
than the average high-school position in town, so 
eagerly sought by many teachers. I have had this 
statement most disparagingly challenged by a few 
prominent educators on more than one occasion, but 
their challenge does not lessen its validity. The 
teacher's opportunity in the best rural and village 
districts is one to which many of our educators, 
and some very prominent ones, too, are deaf, dumb 
and blind. 

Lingleville, Texas, is an average country village 
with two hundred people and a four-teacher school. 
I believe that I could make that place build me a home 
and pay me a salary of two thousand dollars in 
three years' time. But I could not do it with the 
sort of school I taught when I was principal there 
twelve years ago. I received seventy-five dollars 
per month then. I think that was about all I was 
worth. I gave them a very good school, as schools 
ordinarily go. It was the only sort of school I had 
ever been taught to teach. Of course, it was stereo- 
typed and conventional. But the reasons for its 
flimsy adaptation to the needs of that place were 



144 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

not my fault. They were the faults of the school 
that taught me. That school gave me my benighted 
point of view before I received my diploma and cer- 
tificate to teach. 

Four years of the usual academic regimen at 
college seldom makes a rural-life leader. It more 
commonly leaves the graduate in conventional ruts 
from which he never extricates himself. Most of 
the small number of rural-life leaders we do have 
might well be termed accidental and sporadic, 
having acquired their points of view after they left 
college. Knowing the subject usually included 
in the college curriculum may help one in the tech- 
nical mastery of a profession, but it does little to 
stimulate the latent germs of leadership, or to set 
advanced educational practises into motion. The 
captaincy of a football team, the office of Boy Scout 
Master, or the foremanship of a West-Texas ranch 
is worth far more as a developer of the initiative, 
the concepts and the personality one must have to 
be a leader of men and a practical interpreter of 
life in action. 

Rural-life courses should be among the most 
attractive courses in the normal-school curriculum. 
With the proper encouragement they would be. If 
they were, young men and young women of talent 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I45 

would be attracted to them to make rural uplift 
their life-work. In Denmark the directing and 
coordinating of rural activities has become a pro- 
fession. Rural-life reformers are numbered among 
the greatest men of the nation. The same field of 
educational endeavor is open to the best talent of 
the South to-day. But it still remains for our 
southern educators to exploit in the manner that the 
Danes have done. 

6. Our Conservative Institutions of Higher 
Learning. — Prior to the Civil War there were a 
great many academies in the South. They were 
attended, for the most part, by the sons of the 
wealthy plantation owners. These academies pre- 
pared boys for college entrance, and the colleges 
later prepared them for politics and for the pro- 
fessions. With the Civil War and the freeing of 
the slaves came the bankruptcy of most of the plan- 
tation owners. Following their bankruptcy came 
the gradual closing of the doors of most of the 
academies and the corresponding extension of free- 
school privileges to all the children of the land. 
For the want of a better working model, the develop- 
ing free schools copied many of the educational 
practises of the academies and went on educating 
just as though every child in attendance would stay 



146 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

till graduation day, then go away to college and 
ultimately become a doctor, lawyer, politician, or 
some other professional person. Till this day, 
our public schools are not entirely free from that 
ancient ideal. Why? 

This last spring I attended five high-school 
graduating exercises. I heard the speeches of vale- 
dictorians and the papers read by class prophets. I 
heard it prophesied that twenty years hence one 
member of a class would be an opulent Wall-Street 
banker; another the president of a prosperous oil 
company with offices in some far-away city ; another 
a world-renowned surgeon; still another a college 
president; and yet others governors, congressmen 
and senators. But not one time did I hear it 
prophesied that twenty years hence some boy or 
some girl vv^ould be the leading person in all the 
home community, helping to better the highways of 
life traveled by the average citizen. The enlighten- 
ment of the great motley throng and the welfare of 
the busy industrial ranks were things unmentioned. 
Affluence and honorable position were the mani- 
fest goals of their youthful desires. Their interest 
in collective betterment was no match for their 
craving for personal advancement. 

High-school graduates usually reflect the ideals 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I47 

of their instructors. Their instructors, as a rule, 
reflect the ideals of the institutions that educated 
them. Where were the teachers of these high- 
school graduates educated? Some of them in my 
own state university, some in the normal schools 
of my state, and some in the universities and normal 
schools of other states. Few of these institutions, 
if any at all, are as seriously concerned as they 
should be with the humbler callings and with the 
c"6nstructive improvement of the lowly walks of life 
in our great Southland. They are distressingly 
slow in overcoming the unyielding precedents of 
the scholastic past. They are slaves to many of 
the educational practises of yesterday that bear 
remotely on the issues of to-day. 

Most of our southern population resides in the 
country. The civilization of the South must be 
essentially a rural civilization. The educators and 
statesmen of this generation and the next will have 
to battle mainly with rural issues. Our institutions 
of higher learning are under obligations to give 
them a better training for their duties. 

The present indifference of our southern insti- 
tutions of higher learning toward rural issues is 
tantamount to short-sighted statesmanship on their 
part. They are dependent, in the main, upon rural 



148 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

constituencies for their financial support. Most of 
them go before the legislatures, predominantly rural 
in their personnel, every two years and bow down 
like begging mendicants for revenues for the coming 
biennium. It is absurd to expect the financial and 
moral support given to our institutions of higher 
learning by rural people and their representatives to 
be in a greater ratio than the services rendered them 
by these institutions. 

There is abundant ground for the complaint that 
rural-life courses are not getting their share of atten- 
tion. And there is also abundant justification for 
the charge that most of the very few rural-life 
courses now being offered are mere makeshifts not 
well adapted to present-day needs in the South. 
For example, as a student in the University of 
Texas eight years ago, I enrolled for a course in 
rural economics. What did I get? An instructor 
not at all familiar with rural conditions in Texas, 
a text written by a Harvard professor, and some 
parallel reading assignments of a very general 
nature. I got almost no direct Hght on the existing 
rural problems of my state. I finished that course 
in disappointment, feeling that I was very little 
better prepared for grappling with the question of 
production, transportation, marketing and rural 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I49 

finance now confronting us and demanding con- 
structive reform than I was before reading the as- 
signments and taking notes on the lectures given in 
that course. But the failure of the course was not the 
fault of the instructor who gave it. It was due to 
a handicap under which he labored. He could not 
make the course immediately applicable to Texas 
when the necessary data fresh from the source in 
Texas was not at hand. The task of gathering it 
and putting it into usable form was too great for 
any one person and no institution in the state 
had ever made any very serious attempt to do it. 
Thus it is. Courses in rural economics, rural 
sociology and rural education can never meet the 
practical requirements of our day until some insti- 
tution comes to their aid and does the necessary 
research work and collecting of data that new texts 
may be written and the contents of the courses made 
rich and attractive. Without an abundance of 
concrete facts, well organized and bearing directly 
upon our southern rural problems, rural-life courses 
can never be given with the greatest practical worth 
to those who take them. 

Our institutions of higher learning are slow to 
make changes in their curricula and equally as slow 
to make needed additions to them. Some of them 



150 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

have venerable departments quite antagonistic to 
innovations. When a new subject knocks on the 
door and asks for admission into the academic 
household, some of these older members of the 
family, hoary with age, promptly challenge all its 
rights as though its adoption might expose them to 
the dangers of ultimate disinheritance. A new sub- 
ject has to fight for recognition. It also has to 
show just cause for fighting. There are many 
reasons why rural-hfe courses should be entitled to 
a more liberal recognition. Every state institution 
of higher learning in the South should have a De- 
partment of Rural Life. But it is difficult for these 
institutions to reform themselves from within. 
They can not overcome the momentum of their own 
conservatism. Aggressive assistance is needed 
from without. The pressure of enlightened public 
sentiment can do much in helping take this for- 
midable trench in the warfare of academic reform.. 
Insistent demands from public school-teachers and 
wide-awake laymen will be of inestimable value to 
some of our institutions of higher learning in the 
laudable work of putting their own houses in better 
order. 

7. The Ultimate Remedy. — Some day our nor- 
mal schools, colleges and universities will hear the 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I5I 

suppliant call of the country community. They will 
grasp its meaning with sympathy and understand- 
ing. That will be the dawn of the morning of a 
new epoch in rural community welfare. It will 
mark the beginning of the reorganization and 
redirecting of our normal schools. 

The rehabilitated normal school will have a new 
curriculum. It will be strong in the social-science 
and the life-science groups of study. Some of the 
obsolete subjects handed down by tradition and 
rigidly required for graduation may be omitted 
entirely. Its purpose will be to produce a gener- 
ation of graduates who know how to teach people 
to keep healthy, live comfortably and be happy. 
This will require more lessons on food, clothing, 
personal hygiene, sanitation, general science, house- 
hold conveniences, home beautification, thrift, 
recreation, citizenship, leadership, rural sociology, 
community civics, group psychology, country life, 
community cooperation, business accounting, rural 
economics, farm crops, farm animals and other sub- 
jects bearing immediately on the welfare of the 
individual, the home and the community. 

Concurrent with the reform of the normal-school 
curriculum will be a reform in the normal-school 
faculty. The intolerant stand-patter and the hide- 



152 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

bound conservative will either have to yield to more 
liberal policies or be permanently cast upon the pro- 
fessional junk heap as decadent relics of the days 
gone by. And many of the teachers of the new 
subjects will have to get better points of view. Some 
of them do not know enough about country life. 
They have heard a great deal about it, they have 
taken standard college courses treating of it, and 
they have often gazed upon the rural landscape with 
the deepest thrills of admiration; but they have 
never tasted of country life, deeply, intimately and 
understandingly. A true knowledge of the deli- 
ciousness of ice-cream can not be acquired from 
reading about it. 

Then, again, there are some instructors in the 
rural social sciences who were born and reared in 
the country, but who have been away from the coun- 
try so long that they have lost much of their rural 
understanding. They do not seem to realize that 
it is essential for them to go back to the country a 
few weeks every year, away out where the real 
American peasants are, in order to keep from for- 
getting some of the things about which they already 
know. Besides that, country customs are changing 
all the time. The vapors from the country store, the 
way country people live, the things they eat, what 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 53 

they wear and what they talk about are not just as 
they were yesterday. The successful teacher of the 
rural social sciences in the future will do much of 
his most profitable post-graduate study out where 
the country people are, living among them, eating 
with them, talking with them, and ever reacquaint- 
ing himself with their side of life. 

When the day of the rehabilitated normal school 
comes and a generation of graduates that has seen 
the new light is directed toward the beckoning 
opportunities in the better types of our rural and 
village communities instead of toward the host of 
mediocre positions in our town and city high 
schools, I confidently anticipate an automatic, up- 
ward revision in the schedule of teachers' salaries. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. There are scores of sawmill villages in the South 
like the one mentioned in this chapter, but very few of 
them pay their teachers as well as this one. Give 
some of the causes for this. 

2. One man said the reason for there being so few 
rural schools in Southwest Texas like the one men- 
tioned in this chapter is that there are so few 
communities like the one supporting that school. 
Another one said, "No, there are many communities 
just as rich in educational possibilities as that one, but 
the reason for so few schools like that one is the great 



154 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

dearth of teachers with the wisdom and the insight to 
organize and develop them." Who was right? 

3. Define the threefold function of rural and vil- 
lage schools in the twentieth century. 

4. Give some of the causes for poor salaries for 
teachers. Account for the indifference of the average 
layman toward the sort of education offered by the 
average public school. Will the public pay better 
salaries to teachers when the character of the service 
rendered by the free schools to the general public is 
improved? Why do most country boys drop out of 
school before they reach the high-school grades ? What 
would be the effect on their attendance if the work of 
the schools were made more practical and allied more 
closely with their interests and life needs and with all 
the normal activities of the community? 

5. Why have most of our educators and most of 
our normal schools and colleges overlooked the oppor- 
tunity for leadership and for attractive salaries for 
capable teachers in the better types of our rural and 
village communities? Which position would you 
prefer : the superintendency of a village school like the 
one mentioned in this chapter, or the principalship of a 
high school in the average town of five thousand 
population ? 

6. Why does a teacher with no other interests than 
academic interests so seldom achieve distinction as a 
community leader? Why are there so few teachers 
and community leaders like the principals of the two 
schools mentioned in this chapter? Would we have 
more of them if our normal schools were more deeply 
concerned in the production of their kind ? Why have 
our institutions of higher learning in the South paid 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 55 

SO little attention to the production of rural-life leaders ? 
Show that the civilization of the South must be essen- 
tially a rural civilization. Would young men and 
young women of talent enroll for rural-life courses 
and make rural education and rural community leader- 
ship their life-work if such courses were properly 
encouraged by our normal schools? 

7. What is meant by the statement, "The rehabili- 
tated normal-school curriculum will be strong in the 
social-science and the life-science groups of study"? 
Which is of greater value to the average rural or 
village teacher, a course in practical rural sociology or 
a course in plane trigonometry? Describe an ideal 
instructor for the rural social sciences in a normal 
school. Why is it so essential that he keep up his 
relationships and acquaintance with rural people and 
rural institutions by frequent visits to the country? 



CHAPTER X 
School Taxes in Country Districts 

I have assisted in many school-tax elections and 
school-bond elections. In this chapter I shall men- 
tion some of the difficulties to be reckoned with and 
some of the methods and arguments I have seen 
used to best advantage in school- tax campaigns 
among country people. And permit me to say that 
simplicity and concreteness are two of the cardinal 
notes of success in treating any subject before a 
rural audience. 

T. Methods of Public Appeal — Sometimes it is 
best to conduct a school-tax campaign by a well- 
organized system of personal interviews. At other 
times it is best to supplement this campaign of indi- 
vidual solicitations with one or more public meet- 
ings. At these public rallies I have observed that 
the most successful campaigners usually employ a 
combination of reason, sentiment, humor and sar- 
casm in their discussions. 

(a) Reason. — Sound logic carries with it an 
acceptable dignity that is respected by some people 
who would resent a purely sentimental appeal. And 

156 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 57 

these are usually the people whose opinions and 
influence are worth the most in shaping the affairs 
of a community. It is best to address them in the 
language of reason. 

(b) Sentiment — There are many people whose 
actions are influenced more by sentiment than by 
the higher thought processes. Unfortunately for 
democracy, they sometimes constitute the balance of 
power or even the majority in a voting precinct. 
The successful campaigner must always be mindful 
of them. They are in every rural audience that 
assembles. 

These people must be addressed and importuned 
through the channels of emotion. Levity and pathos 
are as essential as logic in shaping their attitudes 
and courses of action. Argument must be replete 
with emotional richness and concrete simplicity to 
accommodate their unskilled habits of thought. For 
instance, a man from a university faculty was one 
time assisting a county superintendent in a very 
backward county, pleading for better schools for 
country children. An obstinate old layman opposed 
to modem progress resented his doctrine and his 
presence in the home community. For several days 
prior to this educator's coming he protested among 
the patrons of the decadent Httle school : "It is none 



158 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

of that man's business what sort of school we have 
out here." He branded him as an interloper and a 
meddler. Some of the benighted people had sided 
with him. But at the proper moment on the occa- 
sion of the mass meeting set for that commAinity, 
the speaker made an impassioned plea, saying most 
persuasively and emphatically : '*It is my business 
what sort of school these children have! When I 
see them holding up their white hands pleading for 
an even start with their city competitors in the race 
of life in this twentieth century, I would be recreant 
to my duty as a citizen if I did not raise my voice in 
their behalf. Their blood is just as red and their 
birthrights are just as precious as those of the 
whitest children that walk our city streets. They 
are every bit as good as .their more fortunate city 
cousins. They are entitled to the same advantages. 
Are they getting them ? Will their parents and their 
adult friends thoughtlessly continue to stand be- 
tween them and the fortunes of a beckoning future 
by not voting the funds and equipping a school 
commensurate with the needs of this new day in 
the life of our Nation?" 

Then the legal form for a tax election was 
adroitly presented and explained. Every qualified 
voter present, save one, signed on the dotted lines. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 59 

and the next day the election notices were legally 
posted. Three weeks later the election was held and 
the tax was carried with only two dissenting votes. 

Cold reasoning would have passed above the 
heads of most of those people. It took reasoning 
seasoned with the warmth of emotion to move them 
to action. And by keeping their emotional enthu- 
siasm kindled till election day, the school's financial 
distress in that community was relieved. 

(c) Sarcasm. — Sometimes the best way to kill 
a man's influence is to make a huge joke out of him. 
He can not carry his point with everybody laughing 
in his face. For instance, one time there was a tax 
election pending in a rural district near the town of 
Taylor, Texas. Two nights before the day of the 
election an educational rally was held at the school- 
house. An absentee landlord from Taylor was pres- 
ent. He was bitterly opposed to the tax. He had 
defeated a tax election the year before by intimidat- 
ing his tenants. This time he was endeavoring to 
do it again. So the main speaker of the evening 
kept him steadily in view. When he had the minds 
of his hearers properly prepared, he told this story : 

"A few weeks ago I saw a man in East Texas 
who presided over a meeting of anti-school tax- 
payers. Nine benighted denizens from the back- 



l60 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

woods and forks of the creek met at the old 
schoolhouse that had seen service for more than 
forty years to unite their efforts to defeat the school 
tax in the election ten days later. I wish you 
could have seen the chairman of that convention. 
When I saw him he was standing in front of a small 
grocery store leaning against an iron post eating a 
hamburger. The hamburger was of the big fifteen- 
cent variety. I judge the gentleman was hungry, for 
each bite he took was as big as an ordinary biscuit. 
He was very gaunt and more than six feet tall. 
His neck was distressingly long and slender. An 
immense Adam's apple raced up and down the front 
side of it in response to each bite of hamburger. 
On the top end of his neck a small-sized human head 
was perched. It was bald down to the ears and 
decorated with a huge wart on its apex. I walked 
around him three times in amusement. Then I said 
to myself: 'Old man, of course you would vote 
against a school tax. You and all your kind will 
do it every time you get a chance.' And don't you 
know, ladies and gentlemen, as I came over here this 
afternoon I met a man in the road who looked 
almost like that old fellow. I think he lives at 
Taylor." 

The entire audience saw the point. There was a 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL l6l 

mighty burst of laughter and applause. Then the 
story of The Stingiest Man in the World was told, 
and closed with the aspersion, "I wonder if he lives 
at Taylor, too." At this juncture the man from 
Taylor left the house in a rage of anger as the 
audience applauded uproariously. Then an appeal 
was made to the manhood of the tenants to come out 
and stand up for their children in the election two 
days later. They did, and the tax was carried. 

Ordinarily, sarcasm, innuendo and bitter asper- 
sions should be avoided. But there are instances 
where their use is abundantly justified. There are 
some enslaved communities that never can be free 
till the influence of certain remorseless persons 
oppressing them is killed. ''Those whom the gods 
would destroy they first make mad." There is no 
surer method for crushing a heartless landlord with 
small sympathies for education and helpless children. 
Antagonize him and make him accept the gage of 
battle out in the open. Show him up and clear away 
the subterfuges he hides behind. Then if he grows 
desperate, his destruction is assured. He can not 
survive the unpopularity of fighting in full view. 
He will wither in the sunshine of publicity created 
by his own acts. 

But sarcasm is a dangerous weapon in the hands 



l62 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

of the amateur. It is equally as dangerous in the 
hands of the timid and fearful, and that includes 
most teachers, for teachers as a tribe are not very 
courageous. Even when employed by the cleverest 
of experienced campaigners, it sometimes comes 
back like a boomerang. But for a man to contend 
that its use should be dispensed with entirely in rural 
campaigns, is a prima facie admission that he is not 
well acquainted with the psychology of rural groups. 

2. The School as a Business Investment for the 
Community — In a new and developing community 
a good school is an exceedingly valuable business 
asset. It attracts desirable families and enhances 
property values. Nobody has been more keenly 
aware of this than the practical land agents and 
land development companies in Texas the last 
twenty years. 

In one county a wealthy banker with large land- 
holdings helped build eleven schoolhouses and almost 
as many churches. One day three men promoting a 
new church came to him for assistance. They so- 
licited no special sum but expected him to give one 
hundred dollars. After they had laid the case before 
him, he said, "If you men will put up a new house, 
paint it, and finish it in a creditable way, I will 
furnish the material." And he did furnish it. The 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 163 

bill was five hundred and ninety-two dollars. That 
sum purchased no mean amount of pine lumber 
twenty years ago. 

A year later one of the members of this commit- 
tee returned to this generous banker's office and 
said to him, "If I could only give as you have given, 
I should be a happy man." And the banker replied : 
"But your giving would be quite different from 
mine. It would be real charity. You would give 
out of the bigness of your heart. My giving has 
been practical business. I have given because it paid 
me to do so. Do not ascribe any of the credit to me 
for building that church. John Parks and Sam 
Shaw are the men who did it. They paid the bill. 
The day the last nail was driven in that house, T 
raised the price on my two small farms just to the 
south of it seven hundred dollars and one thousand 
dollars respectively. Then Parks came and bought 
one of them and Shaw the other. The church was 
the advertisement that brought me the purchasers. 
My contribution to it was a business investment and 
not a deed of charity. So it has been with most of 
the schools and churches I have helped build in this 
county." 

In West Texas, in 1907, during the life of C. W. 
Post, I heard him say : "I mean to develop these two 



164 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

hundred sections of wild land. I mean to enhance 
their value and make them desirable property and 
attractive places for people to live. To do this, 
good schools and good roads will be necessary. I 
mean to construct the roads out of my own capital 
and build comfortable schoolhouses as the people 
need them." 

I watched that colonization project conducted by 
that great financier until his death in 19 14. In some 
instances land prices advanced from five dollars to 
sixty dollars per acre. And at no time did this man 
lose sight of the value of the public schools and the 
public roads as instruments in the profitable develop- 
ment of his holdings. He regarded them as good 
investments. As he saw it, the country schoolhouse 
is a place where charity and business meet. The 
unwritten rules of good business, as well as the spirit 
of patriotism, made him an active supporter of 
public education. 

The financing of the public schools and the pub- 
lic roads paid handsome dividends to the millionaire 
C. W. Post. The new church, previously mentioned, 
enhanced the values of the farms purchased by John 
Parks and Sam Shaw, and did the same for every 
other farm within the radius of its influence. 
Schools, roads and churches are fine investments in 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 165 

any new and developing country. And the oldest of 
the Southern States are still young and immature in 
point of economic growth. The high plains of West 
Texas, the coastal plains of South Texas, and the 
millions of acres of cut-over lands in East Texas, 
Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi are lying in a 
state of semi-idleness waiting for the prosperous 
stimulus of better roads, better schools, better 
churches and more people. Indeed, there are but 
few counties, if any at all, in the entire South so 
fully developed that their commercial values would 
not respond favorably to additional investments in 
school and road improvements. 

3. The Wealth of the Community Must Sup- 
port Its Schools. — Four years ago in the city of San 
Antonio I obtained a touching story from a Mexican 
refugee. He was a proud Castilian and had been a 
man of wealth and affluence in his country prior to 
the revolution that forced him to flee to Texas for 
safety. 

He said : "In Mexico we have no well-established 
system of public education. I used to object to the 
theory of paying taxes for the educating of other 
people's children. I thought it unjust. It was too 
much like the requisitioning of private property for 
the benefit of particular individuals. But when the 



l66 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

enemy came into my plantation and confiscated my 
entire harvest of wheat, forty thousand sacks then 
in the field, I had a change of mind. I saw that 
every acre of land and every bushel of wheat I pos- 
sessed should be more securely protected. And don't 
you know, in a democracy, the best protection prop- 
erty can have is the protection of an intelligent bal- 
lot. And the only way to guarantee an intelligent 
ballot is through a system of free public education. 
When I go back to my country, if I am ever per- 
mitted to do so, I shall go on record with what 
influence I have for a system of free schools sup- 
ported by a system oi ad valorem taxes throughout 
the republic. Mexico must have free schools like 
America has. It is up to the real and personal 
property of all the people to foot the bills." 

Governmental conditions are better in Texas 
than in Mexico. Real and personal property values 
are higher on the north side of the Rio Grande 
River than on the south side of it. Life, wealth 
and the pursuit of happiness are infinitely more se- 
cure. America is a better place for civiHzed people 
to live. Let the man who protests against the pay- 
ment of taxes for the support of our free schools go 
to Mexico, where there are no such taxes to pay. In 
that torn and bleeding republic he belongs. He is 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 6/ 

not worthy of the protection of the American flag 
and the blessings enlightenment brings. He is 
criminally selfish, dangerously short-sighted and 
destitute of a high sense of honor. He deserves the 
odium of a slacker and the contempt of all whose 
hearts are true to American ideals. 

4. The Inherent Fear of Taxation — On a circus 
day a group of school-boys was crowded around the 
monkeys' cage. They were feeding the monkeys 
nuts and bits of fruit. A score of grimacing faces 
clamored greedily for the food. Appetites were keen, 
and numerous begging hands and arms were ex- 
tended for more to eat. Then one of them seized a 
small paper bag and ran away with it. A half dozen 
hungry comrades followed in close pursuit. The bag 
was opened. But horrors! a small striped serpent 
wiggled out of it, and there was sudden consternation 
in monkeydom. There were wild frantic leaps to 
places of safety on the perches in the top of the cage. 
There were shrill hysterical shrieks and screams dis- 
tressingly painful. It seemed that some of the 
monkeys, old and young, would die of fear in spite 
of all their keeper could do to pacify them. 

A week later one of the boys related the incident 
at school. His teacher heard the story and then gave 
this explanation. He said : "In some portions of the 



l68 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

tropics where monkeys live in great abundance there 
are certain arboreal snakes that live almost entirely 
on them. They have done so for hundreds of gen- 
erations. They are the monkeys' worst enemies. 
For that reason most monkeys have an instinctive 
fear of snakes. This fear is ingrained into their 
nervous systems from birth. It is so deep-seated 
that many of them grow frantic at the very sight of 
a snake." 

There are some people who seem to fear the 
principle of taxation with horrors almost as deep- 
seated as the monkeys' fear of snakes. They grow 
frantic every time a new tax is proposed. Their 
conduct when a local tax election is pending is no less 
amusing than the conduct of that cage of frightened 
monkeys. For instance, in 19 14, in Nacogdoches 
County, Texas, one poor old fellow with five chil- 
dren of free school age waged a bitter campaign 
against the local school tax, contending that the 
people were already tax-ridden and burdened with 
tribute-giving beyond the point of endurance. An 
examination of the tax rolls revealed the fact that 
his only property listed for taxation was one Jersey 
cow and the taxes had not been paid on her for 
three years. In Collin County a man fought a road 
tax with the same kind of argument when his taxable 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 169 

wealth consisted of nothing but a cheap Elgin watch 
and a white English bulldog. Again, in Erath 
County an old fellow whose tax was only sixty- 
three cents and whose three children of free school 
age received benefits from the school tax to the 
amount of thirty dollars, was the bitterest enemy the 
school tax had. I might tabulate a long list of 
extreme cases like these and a much longer list of 
cases less extreme. 

Just how much of this active opposition to local 
taxes is attributable to the instinct of fear and how 
much to the instinct of acquisition and the spirit 
of greed, I am not qualified to say. But after having 
observed a large number of cases, I am persuaded to 
believe that more times than not it is an expression 
of the instinct of fear. It leads one to think that, 
before the rise and practise of democracy, when the 
kings and nobles were in the ascendency exacting 
tribute from the common people for centuries, 
the pains of oppression left permanent traces of fear 
and apprehension in the nerves of all the genera- 
tions of men that have followed. To say the least, 
with many poorly informed country people in the 
South to-day taxation and oppression are 
synonymous. 

Yet, most of these poorly informed, semi-illiter- 



170 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

ate, frantic fighters-of-taxes-in-all-forms are amen- 
able to reason when properly approached. But to 
approach them effectively and successfully, you must 
know them. You must know their language, ideals, 
attitudes, interests, sensibilities and capacities for 
understanding. Many county superintendents are 
failing every year because of an imperfect knowledge 
of the people whom they seek to lead. They could 
profit much by the little boy's advice to the professor. 
When the professor could not get a pet dog to jump 
over a stick for him as it had done for the boy and 
began showing signs of impatience and exasperation, 
the boy admonishingly said, ''Professor, you've got 
to have more sense than the dog." 

When the most primitive-minded community is 
sympathetically shown that schools are good invest- 
ments, that education is the public's best protection, 
that school taxes are imposed democratically rather 
than autocratically, and that a school tax requires 
only a very small portion of the community's in- 
come, I have found no insurmountable difficulty in 
voting funds for school maintenance. The more 
enlightened communities support public education 
because they realize these values. It is a function of 
the county superintendent and the educational mis- 
sionary in all capacities to simplify these values and 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL IJl 

make them so plain that the crudest illiterate in all 
the land can understand them. It is not in centers of 
culture, but in remote precincts of this great nation 
of ours that the light of education needs most to 
penetrate and drive darkness from the souls of men. 
It is in the most backward communities that the 
principle of ad valorem taxation for the support of 
free schools is least understood. It is there that 
"tax" is one of the most unpopular words in com- 
mon use. There is the place where the people reside 
who are least able to figure for themselves, and 
where the most elementary explanations are neces- 
sary. To convince them that a tax of fifty cents on 
each one hundred dollars of wealth is not confisca- 
tory or unreasonable, I have often taken a silver dol- 
lar and put a one-cent postage stamp by the side of it 
and shown that one-half of the value of the stamp is 
sufficient to pay the tax on the dollar for one year. 
Then they are reminded that the dollar is capable of 
earning eight cents per annum when put at interest. 
And when it is made clear and emphatic that no 
thoughtful, patriotic man would be so close and mis- 
erly as to begrudge one-half cent of this dollar's 
earnings to a cause so sacred as the cause of educa- 
tion for helpless children, enough voters to make 
the required majority on election day will usually 



172 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

see the light. And this is typical of the methods 
and devices that must be employed by the practical 
field worker to overcome the inherent fear of taxa- 
tion so prevalent in many backward rural localities. 

5. Poverty a State of Mind — Some people of 
wealth feel as though they are very poor. Others of 
very moderate means have the bearing and enjoy the 
feelings of opulence. They have the faculty of ac- 
quiring most of the comforts and conveniences of 
life in spite of the forbidding limitations of their 
bank-accounts. Their outlook on life is not be- 
clouded with gloom. The deadening sense of poverty 
does not weigh heavily on their heads. They possess 
the spirit of buoyancy, thrift and brightness that 
guarantees individual prosperity and gives strength 
to organized society. 

And so it is with communities. Some are cour- 
ageous, confident, decisive in spirit, and always 
ready to champion any worthy public undertaking. 
Others are stupid, motionless and morbidly de- 
pressed with an inordinate consciousness of their 
own weakness and inability to do things. This is 
particularly true of many rural places. The sicken- 
ing consciousness of poverty is cheating thousands 
of country communities in the South out of adequate 
free schools every year. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 73 

And the fact is, the per capita wealth in some of 
these poverty-conscious country districts with the 
school facilities of half a century ago is almost as 
great as the per capita wealth in the neighboring 
urban centers with the best of modern free-school 
advantages. For instance, in 19 17, in a rural area 
including fourteen school districts in sight of the 
city of Austin, the per capita wealth was three hun- 
dred and eighty-five dollars as compared with the 
per capita wealth of four hundred and forty-nine 
dollars in Austin. But Austin spent sixty-seven and 
one-tenth cents per one hundred dollars of 
wealth on its public schools that year as compared 
with an expenditure of seven and three-tenths 
cents per one hundred dollars of wealth in this 
rural area. In other words, when measured by 
ability to pay, Austin is more than nine times as 
liberal in the support of its free schools as this 
group of country districts. Yet there is a common 
feeling among these country people that Austin's 
superior schools are due to its superior ability to 
finance them. 

There is no kind of education more necessary 
among most country people just now than education 
on the subject of giving. These people may be 
evangelized and successfully converted to the values 



174 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

of all that is modern and best for the educational 
welfare of their children ; but until this blinding de- 
lusion of poverty is dispelled, we can hope for no 
very substantial advancement in the character and 
quality of their schools. 

6. Farm Tenants Show Little Interest in School 
Finances. — There are four main causes for the ten- 
ant's general lack of interest in the financial sup- 
port of the schools his children attend : ( i ) intimi- 
dation from landlords, (2) despondency, (3) 
shiftlessness, (4) poverty. 

While there are many bitter charges of overt 
intimidation of tenants by covetous landlords, most 
of them, on investigation, prove untrue. Even the 
hardest of landlords are seldom so imprudent as to 
make a blatant threat to remove a tenant or raise the 
rent. Their untoward attitude usually finds expres- 
sion in subtler ways. They speak the language of 
discouragement with great skill. They plead hard 
times and high prices. They advocate deferring 
school improvements to some later date. "Next 
year" is the time usually set. When a bond issue 
is proposed for building a new schoolhouse, they can 
easily show why it should be built by private dona- 
tions. But no matter what the subterfuge employed, 
the deadly effects are always the same. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1/5 

Despondency, shiftlessness and poverty hang like 
millstones on the necks of most tenant communities. 
"I work all the time," said an intelligent tenant 
farmer twenty-eight years old. "It is all I can do 
to clothe and feed my five babies. Land is one 
hundred and fifty dollars per acre. As for owning 
a home — well, there is no chance for me." 

"Our system of land tenure is most damnable," 
said another well-informed tenant. "Why beautify 
the front yard, install running water in the house, 
keep up the lot fences, and repaint the schoolhouse 
for somebody else's benefit next year ? My contract 
to work this farm lasts only to the end of December. 
If I had a ten-year contract, I guess my attitude 
toward the farm and the community would be dif- 
ferent. Our system of land tenure is responsible 
for much of the shiftlessness and lack of public 
enterprise among the tenant classes." 

It is all but futile to inaugurate any scheme for 
social and educational reform and at the same time 
ignore its fundamental hindering causes. That the 
problems of education can ever be successfully 
solved in a community of high-priced land and farm 
tenants is very doubtful to any one thoroughly con- 
versant with such conditions. The homeless man is 
limited in his usefulness as a citizen. He seldom 



176 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

identifies himself with the church, school and civic 
interests of the neighborhood as he would if he 
owned the land he lives on. He may be a good 
school patron, but the exhilarating stimulus of home- 
ownership would make him a better one. 

7. Absentee Landlords Object to Local School 
Taxes — There is not a county in the rich Black 
Land Belt of Texas where as many as fifty per cent, 
of the farmers own their homes. In Collin County 
sixty-nine per cent, of them are tenants. The same 
is true in Ellis County. And in some portions of the 
rich Brazos Valley outside of the Black Land Coun- 
ties, the percentage of farm tenancy is even higher. 

I have found no place in the state where it is 
more difficult to vote local school taxes than in 
these areas of high-priced land, farm tenants and 
absentee landlords. And this difficulty is by no 
means confined to the negro-tenant communities 
within the area described. In many white-tenant 
communities of English-speaking Americans a 
school tax is just as surely foredoomed to failure. 
There are two primary causes for it: (i) the inher- 
ent fear of taxation on the part of many poorly in- 
formed tenants, (2) the spirit of acquisition and 
greed on the part of the landlords. 

In making a close examination of a tenant area 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 77 

of two hundred square miles and more than thirteen 
thousand population in Travis County, I found that 
only one absentee landlord out of a group of more 
than thirty had actively encouraged his tenants to 
vote for a school tax. The following is typical of 
some of the information gathered from school 
patrons : "If you want to know what makes our 
school one of the sorriest in Travis County, I can 
tell you in a very few words. This community is 
owned and controlled by three men who do not live 
here. They keep their tenants in fear of them. Two 
years ago when we were circulating a petition for a 
tax election, Mr. A came out and said to his tenants : 
*You vote a tax on me and I will see that you pay it. 
I will raise the rent on the last one of you.' Mr. B 
came out and said to his tenants, 'Gentleman, you 
may vote a tax on me if you choose, but you can 
prepare to move next year if you do.' Their bluffs 
carried. That was the last of the proposed school 
tax. You have found our school in a deplorable 
condition, and I see no hope for any immediate 
improvement." 

When a landlord accumulates wealth and moves 
to town, he usually loses interest in the welfare of 
the community where he gained his financial inde- 
pendence. He feels no longer obligated to support 



178 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the rural institutions of the people who were once 
his country neighbors. Sometimes he grows actively 
unsympathetic toward all public enterprises in the 
rural precincts from whence he came. But, for- 
tunately for country children, it is getting more un- 
popular all the time for a landlord to oppose a 
school tax. For that reason, it is growing less diffi- 
cult to vote school taxes in some of the counties 
where the tenant population is heaviest. So much 
to the credit of relentless publicity. 

As a remedy for the unsympathetic attitude of 
the absentee landlord toward rural-school finances, 
I wish to make two recommendations : ( i ) a gradu- 
ated land tax so distributed as to place the burden 
of it on the larger estate; (2) an extension of the 
state's credit providing long-time payments and low 
rates of interest for tenant farmers desirous of own- 
ing homes. But since a discussion of these proposi- 
tions falls within the province of the economist, I 
shall not make the attempt to discuss them here. 

8. A County-School Tax — A county-wide 
school tax would do much toward relieving the 
financial distress of many school districts now suf- 
fering from artificial economic pressure imposed 
from without. No other one measure would do 
more for the immediate financial relief of many 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 79 

rural schools in tenant communities dominated by- 
non-resident owners of land. And until outside 
assistance is given to some of these communities, 
economically helpless because of conditions over 
which they have no control, their schools must con- 
tinue in a state of most abject squalor. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. Sometimes it is best to hold a public rally when 
a school-tax election is pending, but this is not always 
so. Give examples of when it would be best and of 
when it would not be best. Why is an emotional 
appeal to voters sometimes as essential as a logical 
appeal ? 

2. If the doors of all the schools and churches in 
your home community were permanently closed, many 
of the best families would soon move away. What ef- 
fect would this have on real estate values ? 

3. Why are most business investments unsafe in 
Mexico? In what respect are free schools guarantors 
of property rights in a democracy ? Why should each 
person be required to support the public school in pro- 
portion to his ability to pay ? 

4. Some persons oppose taxation because of covet- 
ousness, others because of fear. Give examples of 
both groups. Why are the smallest taxpayers some- 
times the bitterest opponents of an ad valorem school 
tax ? In very backward communities it is usually dif- 
ficult to vote a school tax. Why ? 

5. Many people contend that the country can never 
have as good schools as the towns because of the 



l8o THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

country's lack of wealth and its inability to pay for 
them. Is this contention real or imaginary? When 
measured in terms of per capita wealth, which are more 
liberal in the support of public education, the rural dis- 
tricts or the town centers ? 

6. What per cent, of your school patrons are farm 
tenants? Give some reasons why farm tenants, as a 
rule, do not take active parts in school affairs. Would 
home-ownership make most farm tenants better school 
patrons ? 

7. Why are absentee landlords inimical to the best 
interest of rural schools? Have you ever known of 
one encouraging a tenant to vote for a school tax? 
Landlords in Texas are less violent in their opposition 
to school taxes than they were five years ago. Why ^ 

8. Give some of the benefits to be derived from a 
county-wide school tax. 



CHAPTER XI 

Roads and Communication 

I. A ViUage School That Stood for Good 
Roads. — A map made by a student showed the 
roads of the community, indicating existing condi- 
tions as to the distribution and availabihty of gravel, 
earth and macadam suitable for road construction. 
It also showed that there was an excessive mileage 
of roads — that distances could be shortened and the 
cost of upkeep lessened if the roads were differently 
arranged. One road running parallel to a creek for 
more than a mile was subject to periodical overflows 
very destructive to its hard surface. It was pro- 
posed this stretch of road be moved to higher land 
only a short distance away so as to reduce the cost 
of maintenance. The older pupils were familiar 
with the costs of earth excavations, gravel, broken 
stone and concrete for that particular locality. At 
the close of the school one member of the graduat- 
ing class read an interesting paper on The Advan- 
tages of Good Roads. Here are some striking 
statements I have gleaned from it: 

(i) "Good roads overcome many of the dis- 
i8i 



1 82 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

advantages of distance, and the advantages of living 
in town are thus transferred to the country." 

(2) "Good roads have estabHshed a better 
feehng between country people and town people. 
While the city people go to the country for the 
pleasures of outdoor life, the farmer and his family 
have come to know the city better." 

(3) "Good roads do much to overcome the 
monotony of isolation and check the movement from 
the country to town." 

(4) "Bad roads, more than any other factor, 
tend toward isolation and individualism, which are 
directly opposed to organization and cooperation. 
Good roads, on the other hand, distinctly in- 
vite social intercourse and promote fraternal 
understanding. 

(5) "Good roads build up the social and moral 
tone of the community, improve school conditions, 
increase property values, and stimulate civilization 
and advancement in all lines." 

(6) "Improved roads will increase the value 
of farm lands within a mile of the road, on each 
side, at least five dollars per acre." 

(7) "In 1 912, the New York State Depart- 
ment of Agriculture found that the average value 
of all the farms in New York located on earth roads 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 83 

was thirty-five dollars and twenty-one cents per 
acre and the average value of all the farms on 
macadam and other improved roads was fifty-one 
dollars and seventeen cents per acre." 

(8) "The valuation of Harris County, Texas, 
in 1906, was forty-eight million dollars. Then it 
had only a few miles of improved roads. By 191 1 
it had three hundred and fifty miles of improved 
roads built at a cost of four thousand five hundred 
dollars per mile and the valuation of the county was 
one hundred and twenty million dollars." 

(9) "The increase in land values is sufficient, 
and in some cases more than sufficient, to enable 
the landowner to pay his road tax in additional with- 
out an increase in the rate of levy." 

(10) "Bad roads diminish the profits of the 
farmer by forcing him to make more trips, haul 
smaller loads, consume more time, and market his 
produce when the roads are passable rather than at 
those times when the markets are best." 

(11) "Good roads increase the profits of the 
farmer by enabling him to make quicker trips, haul 
larger loads, and market his produce when the 
markets are best." 

(12) "If all the roads were hard and smooth, 
the wagons would last much longer, each horse 



184 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

would require much less feed and attention, and 
the bills for horseshoeing, repairing of harness, and 
the purchase of new harness would be reduced to a 
minimum." 

(13) "If the roads of this county were in first- 
class condition, it would save the automobiles at 
least one cent on every mile traveled. That saving 
alone would amount to more than twenty thousand 
dollars per year, which would more than pay the 
interest and create the sinking fund on the amount 
of bonds necessary for putting the roads in good 
condition." 

(14) ''The attendance of children at school is 
governed very largely by the condition of the roads 
over which they pass in order to reach the school- 
house, and the average attendance of the child 
determines to a great extent the measure of benefits 
he receives from the school." 

(15) "A rural church survey in a populous 
section of Southwestern Ohio reveals the fact that 
where the roads are poorest the population is de- 
creasing. Where the number of miles of improved 
roads is the greatest, both the church membership 
and the enrollment per church are greatest." 

(16) **The men who are chosen as county road 
commissioners handle the county's money and are 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 185 

conservative guardians of the treasury. Their 
conspicuous defect is the lack of positive knowledge 
about road construction and road administration. 
As a rule their entire experience has been gained 
from one town or one county." 

This school's interest and instruction in the 
advantages of good roads had permeated most of 
the citizenry of the community. The quiet work 
of education done in a modest way at the school- 
house had set many of the voters to thinking and 
.making intelligent calculations. One farmer pre- 
sented his case thus : 'T live nine miles from town. 
It takes one wagon one hundred days per year to 
market my hay, corn and cotton. It costs about 
four dollars per day to maintain a wagon, team and 
driver. I am put to an expense of four hundred 
dollars per year to market my farm produce. If 
the roads were in the condition they should be, I 
could double the size of the loads and market my 
crops in half the time with a saving of two hundred 
dollars. In other words, I am paying an annual 
mud tax of two hundred dollars on the roads we 
now have. My proportionate part of the tax neces- 
sary to make good roads would be only forty-five 
dollars per year." This man was for the ad 
z'alorem tax rather than for the less obvious but 



l86 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

more expensive mud tax that so many farmers pay 
every year and fail to see. Much of his enlighten- 
ment on the advantages of better roads had come 
through his fifteen-year-old son at school. 

2. The Chronic Opponent of Public Improve- 
ments. — When the road bond election was held at 
McKinney, Texas, in 19 14, the country lanes were 
like so many interminable miles of oppressive quag- 
mire. One farmer drove in on the brick pavement 
with wagon wheels that were soHd with mud. He 
paid a negro fifty cents to clean the mud off while 
he went and voted against better roads. The same 
day, five fellows hitched four big mules to a wagon 
and drove six miles through mud hub-deep to get 
to the polls to vote against the road tax. Some of 
these very men had cotton at home that they could 
not get to market, and the price was going down 
every day. There are other men like them. I 
could make a long list of their obdurate kind who 
are uncomprisingly opposed to taxes of all sorts and 
are too short-sighted to see the value and economy 
of stable public improvements. It is quite futile to 
try to educate some of them to a new point of view. 
The only hope in their cases is to reach their chil- 
dren through the public schools and rear a more 
enlightened generation of voters and public-spirited 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 187 

citizens. Then we may hope for more citizens like 
the farmer near Bonham, Texas, who remarked, 
after paying a repair bill of five dollars and eighty- 
five cents on his broken harness as a result of getting 
stuck in a mud-hole, "This is one of the indirect 
methods we farmers have of paying our road taxes." 
Or, peradventure, there may be some like the good- 
natured old gardener near Harrisburg, Texas, in 
1 9 14. As a big van passed by with sixty merry 
children in it, he said : "Since they fixed these roads, 
haulin' them school kids is like haulin' my tomatoes. 
You can load your wagon down with them, but you 
can not overload your team. It is not a question 
of what your team can pull, but how much your 
wagon will hold up. I tell you, I sure am for these 
good roads." 

3. Public Roads and Public Schools The 

condition of the public roads in a given locality is 
not an infallible index to the character of the public 
school, but is one that can be relied upon with a 
reasonable degree of accuracy. Occasionally a 
good school may be found in a locality where the 
roads are very bad; but, as a rule, the best schools 
are found where the best roads are. The relation 
between the roads and the schools is so intimate 
that the advocates of better schools must also be 



l88 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

advocates of better roads. When I read of a road 
tax being adopted or hear of a commissioner's court 
appropriating hberally for roads, culverts and 
bridges, I regard it as money appHed for educational 
advancement as well as for social and economic 
advantage. 

4. Transportation of Pupils at Public Expense 
at Harrisburg, Texas — The town of Harrisburg is 
seven miles from the city of Houston. It has about 
twelve hundred inhabitants. There are three small 
incorporated towns in the Harrisburg common- 
school district: MagnoHa Park, Park Place and 
Harrisburg. The district has a scholastic pop- 
ulation of about one thousand pupils, and has five 
schools employing twenty-nine teachers. Thirteen 
of the teachers are employed in the central school at 
Harrisburg. 

The central school does twenty standard units of 
high-school work. It has well-equipped labora- 
tories for physics, chemistry, physiology, biology, 
manual training and domestic science. Hot lunches 
are provided for the pupils each day at actual cost. 
A free medical clinic for the pupils is also main- 
tained by the school. In addition to all these 
advantages, the athletics and social-center work are 
well organized. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 189 

The first experiment in transporting pupils at 
public expense was inaugurated in 1912. A large 
van with room for sixty pupils was put into oper- 
ation between Magnolia Park and Harrisburg — a 
distance of two miles. In 191 3 another van was 
operated between Park Place and Harrisburg with 
accommodations for twenty-five pupils. In 19 14 
the Park Place van was displaced by a Ford car 
and trailer, and the car and trailer have since been 
displaced by a strong motor truck with a capacity for 
thirty pupils. This particular truck delivers two 
loads of children to the Harrisburg school each 
morning — twenty-seven from Park Place and 
twenty from Brookline. These two places are in 
the Harrisburg district about two miles each from 
the central school. 

At present there are one hundred and seventy- 
two pupils transported to the Harrisburg school at 
pubhc expense. One hundred and seven reside in 
the Harrisburg district and sixty-five in other dis- 
tricts. While public transportation of pupils has 
been operating within the district since 19 12, it 
was not extended beyond it until 19 16. 

Three years ago a privately owned motor truck 
was put into use between Elena and Harrisburg at 
a cost of one hundred and ten dollars per month. 



190 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Elena is twenty miles from Harrisburg. This 
truck takes three high-school pupils from Elena 
each morning and collects all the pupils above the 
sixth grade from the small schools at Lynchburg, 
Deer Park, San Jacinto and Deepwater. 

In 19 1 6 a Ford car and trailer were used be- 
tween South Houston and Harrisburg. It conveyed 
eighteen high-school pupils to the Harrisburg school 
that year. It has since been displaced by a motor 
truck purchased jointly by the South Houston and 
the Genoa school districts at a cost of nine hundred 
and fifty dollars. It is driven by a high-school boy 
from South Houston and carries twenty-seven 
children. 

But the most unique of all the public conveyances 
for taking pupils to and from school is the motor 
boat from Penn City to Harrisburg. It began as a 
private conveyance for school purposes in 191 3. 
Last year it was operated by the public at a cost of 
eighty dollars per month. This boat leaves Penn 
City on the ship canal fourteen miles from Harris- 
burg and collects fifteen children on the way. 

By means of public transportation for pupils, the 
benefits of the central high school at Harrisburg 
are being extended to pupils twenty miles in one 
direction, fourteen miles in another, and ten miles 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I9I 

in still another. It is a magnificent example of the 
extension of high-school privileges to country chil- 
dren. As our country roads in the South continue 
to improve, many schools in the future will emulate 
this example. 



THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

Town people and country people are much more 
cordial with each other than they were when I can first 
remember. Give some of the reasons for this increas- 
ing cordiality. Show that bad roads foster selfish- 
ness and individualism, while good roads encourage 
cooperation and public enterprise. How do good 
roads build up the social and moral tone of the com- 
munity? Does farm land on the improved roads of 
your county have a better value than land of the 
same quality ten miles from such roads? If better 
roads in your county would save one cent per 
mile on automobiles, what would the annual saving 
amount to? Are any of your pupils ever prevented 
from attending school because of bad roads? What 
training has your county road commissioner had to 
qualify him for the office he holds? What does he 
know about road construction and road administra- 
tion? How much would good roads save the 
average farmer in your school district in the market- 
ing of his farm products each year? Would better 
roads be conducive to school consolidation and the 
enlargement of educational activities in your locality? 



192 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

REFERENCES 

Bulletins of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 
Washington, D. C. 

Bui. No. 48, Repair and Maintenance of Highways. 
" " y2, Width of Wagon Tires Recom- 
mended for Loads of Varying Magni- 
tudes on Earth and Gravel Roads. 
136, Highway Bonds. 

220, Descriptive Catalogue of Road Models. 
311, Sand-Clay and Burnt-Clay Roads. 
338, Macadam Roads. 
387, Public Road Mileage and Revenues in 

the Southern States. 
463, Earth, Sand-Clay, and Gravel Roads. 
505, Benefits of Improved Roads. 
597, The Road Drag. 

724, Drainage Methods and Foumiations 
for Country Roads. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Public School and the Health of the 
Community 

I. Country Children Are Less Healthy Than 
City Children.* — Statistics on the health of school 
children show that country children are more de- 
fective than city children. It was found in 183 1 
rural districts in Pennsylvania that 75 per cent, of 
the pupils were defective, as compared with 'J2 per 
cent, for 287,499 children in the schools of New- 
York City. Upon investigation it has been found 
that heart trouble is twice as prevalent among 
country children as among city children, and spinal 
curvature twenty-seven times as prevalent. There 
are many more cases of malnutrition in the country 
than in the city. Further comparisons of the health 
of rural and urban children are as follows : mental 
defectives in rural districts, 8 per cent., in urban 
districts 2 per cent. ; ear trouble among country chil- 
dren 5 per cent., among city children i per cent. ; 
country children suffering from defective eyes 21.8 



*These comparative statistics are quoted from Dr. Philip Sumner 
Spence of Teacher's College, New York City, in Public Health, Sep- 
tember, 19 IS, published by the Michigan State Board of Health, 
Lansing, Mich. 



194 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

per cent., city children 5.1 per cent. ; adenoids among 
country children 21.5 per cent., among city children 
8.5 per cent.; enlarged tonsils among country chil- 
dren 30 per cent., among city children 8.8 per cent. 

In 191 5, at the instance of State Superintendent 
J. D. Eggleston, a sanitary survey was made for the 
white and colored schools of Orange County, Vir- 
ginia. The results were later published by the 
United States Bureau of Education, Bulletin 19 14, 
No. 17. The most striking findings are as follows: 
27 per cent, of the white pupils and 23 per cent, of 
the colored pupils examined in the one-teacher 
schools had defective eyesight, while the eyes of 
only 17 per cent, in the graded school were found to 
be defective. In the one-room schools 31.2 per cent, 
showed evidences of malnutrition; (y^j per cent, of 
the boys and 32 per cent, of the girls were anemic. 
As to hook-worm, 35.6 per cent, in the one-room 
white schools, 19.5 per cent, in the rural colored 
schools, and 14.5 per cent, in the graded schools 
were infected. Other findings were as follows : de- 
fective permanent teeth, 58 per cent. ; defective tem- 
porary teeth, 42 per cent. ; defective hearing, 7.5 
per cent. ; adenoids, 34.7 per cent. ; deviated septums, 
3 1 per cent. 

People in the country live in poorer houses and 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I95 

eat food that is poorer in variety and quality than 
city people do. Many country men never saw a good 
wholesome biscuit in their lives, but the baker's loaf 
is known to city dwellers of all ranks. Malnutrition 
stalks like a monster among children of the less pro- 
vident families of the country. And the homes of 
poor people in the country are more squalid than 
those occupied by people of the same degree of pov- 
erty in the cities. They are not furnished so well, 
and the heating and ventilating are more detrimental 
to the health of the occupants. We have rural slums 
with living conditions every bit as intolerable as 
those of the vilest urban slums. And the children 
from these unclean homes often attend schools 
equally as unclean and ill-furnished. Wet feet, cold 
bodies, foul atmosphere, seats made for grown 
people, and lunches that are cold, clammy and indi- 
gestible, contribute their parts to the high percentage 
of ill health and physical deformities found among 
country children. 

The human organism requires intelligent care. If 
the purpose of the free school is to teach the rural 
and urban masses the art of complete living, health 
instruction is one of its elemental functions. The 
medical inspector and the public health nurse must 
be aligned more closely with the public schools. 



196 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

2. Small Physical Defects Prevent Many Chil- 
dren from Passing Their Grades. — In a city of nine 
thousand population a physical examination was 
made of all the pupils who failed to pass their 
grades the year before. It was found that some of 
them failed to pass because their mouths were full of 
carious teeth that so befouled their breath, deranged 
their digestion and poisoned their system that nor- 
mal mental action was impossible. Quite a number 
failed because of dull headaches occasioned by eye- 
strains that could have been easily relieved by lenses 
from a competent oculist; others failed because of 
defective ears that prevented them from hearing and 
understanding much of the instruction their teachers 
gave; constant anno5^ances from nasal passages 
clogged with growths of adenoids caused the failures 
of some ; and diseased tonsils and malnutrition pre- 
vented many others from making their grades. 

One interesting case was that of a large, inert, 
fourteen-year-old boy who had been in the fifth 
grade for three years. Upon examination it was 
found that his eyesight was good, his hearing was 
perfect, his teeth were sound, his nasal passages free 
from adenoids, and his tonsils healthy. But inquir- 
ies directed to the quality and variety of food upon 
which he subsisted revealed the fact that his large 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL I97 

soft body was underfed. He lived almost entirely 
on a diet of bread and sirup. His muscles and 
nerves did not get the protein and other food ele- 
ments necessary to make them vigorous and healthy. 
It was physically impossible for his half-starved 
brain and nerves to do accurate, straight thinking. 

3. Better Food for Farm People and Farm 
Animals. — A low grade of gasoline provokes engine 
trouble. The working efficiency of an engine can 
be no higher than the quality of fuel used. The 
same is true of the human body. Poor food makes 
all its movements labored and heavy. Food that is 
low in quality and poor in variety leaves the body 
weakened and susceptible to disease. 

Good food and plenty of it is wise economy. A 
balanced ration of palatable food not only gives 
physical comfort and bodily efficiency, but it is often 
less expensive than the unbalanced menus on which 
some poor families subsist. For example, a transient 
family of seven members on the streets of a Texas 
town was engaged by a thrifty farmer to pick cot- 
ton through the fall months of 19 12. The farmer 
paid their grocery bills for ninety-two days while 
they worked for him. They lived on coffee, wheat 
flour, sirup, and the fattest sort of cheap bacon. 
The father and mother of this poor family were 



198 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

urged to get a better variety of food for their pale- 
faced children. But they insisted that they were 
poor people, unaccustomed to luxuries, and could 
make out on what they had. So each order of gro- 
ceries was a duplicate of the previous one calling 
for more coffee, flour, sirup and fat bacon. These 
people were not extravagant or wasteful. They 
thought they were living economically. But at the 
end of ninety-two days their landlord discovered 
that this slim variety of food had cost them more 
per individual than it had cost him to feed his own 
family on a well-balanced ration during the same 
time. 

An unbalanced ration is both unhealthy and 
uneconomical. This is as true for the farmer's 
live stock as for his family. Many a farmer feeds a 
dollar's worth of feed and gets back only ninety 
cents' worth of live weight because the ration lacks 
balance and variety. Flocks of hens are given 
nothing but fat-producing feed when eggs are the 
product desired. Stock cattle are fed some high- 
priced concentrate with insufficient roughage to go 
with it. Then the hens are blamed for not laying 
eggs and the cattle are disposed of at a loss, while 
the farmer complains at his "hard luck." 

The chapters on dietetics in our physiologies are 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 1 99 

usually passed over lightly. But some teachers are 
seizing upon them as practical opportunities for im- 
pressing the need for better rations for the family 
and the farm animals. In one community a flock of 
pure-bred hens was laying no eggs. A school-boy 
asked for a sample of the feed they were getting. 
He found it consisted of a mixture of crushed Indian 
corn, feterita, and milo maize — all fat-producing 
grains. Then he remarked, "It is impossible for 
these hens to lay eggs when they are not getting 
the feed eggs are made out of." This boy had not 
had a regular course in poultry feeding. He had 
merely received a few well-taught lessons in the 
physiology class. A few simple lessons in the feed- 
ing of poultry and farm animals had come to him 
as a practical corollary to the chapter on human 
dietetics. "There is more physiology and hygiene in 
the feeding and care and management of live stock 
and poultry than in the text-books, and it is 
physiology and hygiene in which all the family, and 
the family's income, are concerned." 

4. Teaching School Children the Benefits of 
Ventilation, Deep Breathing, and Outdoor Sleeping. 
— -Fresh air is a great nerve tonic. Outdoor sleeping 
has become popular during recent years. No mod- 
ern home in the South is complete without a sleeping 



200 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

porch. All the living-rooms are planned to have a 
sufficiency of light and air. People are learning 
that sunlight and fresh air are essential to the 
health of their bodies. 

But many families still live and sleep behind 
closed doors and lowered windows. Children who 
would not dare eat with unwashed hands or 
unwashed knives and forks will breathe and re- 
breathe unclean air that has been inhaled and 
exhaled dozens of times by themselves and the other 
members of the household. And the atmosphere 
of the crowded living-room is further befouled by 
the stupefying gases from a kerosene lamp for sev- 
eral hours before bedtime. 

Carbon dioxide is always present in exhaled air. 
It is a colorless, odorless gas. Its perception is be- 
yond the reach of the natural senses. This makes 
it elusive and all the more dangerous. If it were 
visible or offensive in smell, its presence would be 
easier to detect. One of tne simplest ways of re- 
vealing its presence is by the lime-water test. Put 
a handful of slacked lime into a quart of water and 
allow it to stand over night. The lime will settle to 
the bottom. Draw off the clear water standing 
above the lime into another vessel, being very care- 
ful not to stir up the lime from beneath. Fill a test- 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 20I 

tube to a depth of one inch with the clear lime 
water, and with a quill or a glass tube bubble the 
breath through it for one-half minute. The white 
precipitate forming* the milky color indicates the 
presence of carbon dioxide. The visible evidence 
thus deduced will impress pupils how very unclean 
it is to breathe after one another. This one simple 
demonstration will force more windows and doors 
open in the sleeping-rooms back at home than a 
whole week of lecturing and moralizing on the bene- 
fits of fresh air. 

While teaching a country school ten years ago, I 
improvised a spirometer to test the lung capacities 
of some of the pupils. It was, done in this simple 
and inexpensive way : a two-gallon bottle was filled 
with water and inverted into a large basin contain- 
ing about one inch of water in the bottom of it. 
The end of a piece of rubber tubing was inserted 
well up into the neck of the inverted bottle of water. 
Then the pupil whose lung capacity was to be 
measured would inhale all the air his lungs would 
hold and blow into the free end of the rubber tube 
till his breath was exhausted. This would force 
part of the water out of the bottle, replacing it with 
air from the lungs. The volume of the air above the 
water remaining in the inverted bottle represents 



202 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the capacity of the pupil's lungs. Gradings on the 
outside of the bottle give the amount in cubic inches. 
Each pupil's lung capacity was tested every month 
and a record kept of it. These simple exercises 
did more to establish habits of deep breathing and to 
impress the need for an abundance of fresh air at 
all times than I ever could have accomplished 
through admonitions and explanations by word of 
mouth. 

5. Screens for Country Schoolhouses and 
Country Homes — A modern one-room schoolhouse 
was built near a malarial swamp. It was neat and 
attractive. It met all the scientific specifications as 
to lighting, heating and furniture. But the building 
contract failed to provide for screens. School 
opened in October. The children's bare feet and 
ankles were exposed to mosquitoes all day. It was 
impossible for them to study in the midst of such 
annoyances. The teacher applied to the school 
board for screen wire with meshes sufficiently close 
to keep out the smallest mosquitoes. The request 
was granted, and the windows and doors were 
screened on Saturday of the first week of school. 
Then the teacher closed the house tightly and fumi- 
gated it with sulphur candles till Monday morning. 
By that time every vestige of insect life in it had 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 2O3 

been destroyed. All the pupils carried reports of the 
improved conditions back home. They were encour- 
aged by the teacher to insist that their parents screen 
their homes : windows, doors and chimney flues. 
Later in the year a stereopticon lecture was given 
by the teacher on the dangers of the mosquito. By 
the following June nine houses in the school dis- 
trict had been screened. Besides that, cans of drip- 
ping oil over pools of standing water had destroyed 
many of the best breeding-places. 

The business men in one of the malarial sections 
of Texas put on an anti-mosquito campaign. It 
created a great demand for screen wire. The slogan 
of ''Screens for Every Home" brought on a con- 
certed war against mosquitoes in the town and sur- 
rounding country. Five years later a local druggist 
took a visitor in the town back behind the prescrip- 
tion case and showed him a large quantity of anti- 
malarial remedies that had been dead stock on his 
shelves since the houses were made proof against 
the mosquitoes. 

"In four towns in Arkansas anti-mosquito meas- 
ures were carried out with marked success. By the 
draining of foul pools, by ditching sluggish streams, 
and by oiling surface water which could not be 
otherwise dealt with, the breeding of anopheles mos- 
quitoes was almost entirely prevented. The results. 



204 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

as tested by the number of calls made by physicians 
on persons suffering- from the disease, were strik- 
ing. In Hamburg, Arkansas, the number of calls 
fell from 2312 in 19 16, to 259 in 19 17, and to 59 in 
19 18, a reduction of 97.4 per cent, for the period. 
The per capita cost for 1917 was $1.45; for 1918 it 
was only 44 cents. It is cheaper to get rid of malaria 
than it is to have it."* 

In an area badly infested with mosquitoes every 
white home in a village of six hundred was tightly 
screened. Health education at school, in cooperation 
with the local doctors, did it. At a community picnic 
one day, before all the homes were screened, the 
teachers put the children from the screened homes 
in one group and those from the unscreened homes 
in another. The two groups of children looked as if 
they might have come from two different worlds. 
In fact, they did. One group came from the unpro- 
tected land of disease-breeding insects; the other 
from homes that were proof against them. One 
group was robust and rosy ; the other was wan and 
sallow. The object lesson was too striking not to be 
heeded. It called for screens for all the homes that 
did not have them. 

Upon a motion by a philanthropic person a 
fly-trapping and house-screening campaign was 



*George E. Vincent, Rockefeller Foundation Review for 191 8, 
pages 11-12. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 20$ 

launched in a West-Texas village. The schoolboys 
were taught to make fly-traps and a bounty of 
ten cents per quart was offered for all the flies cap- 
tured. In the course of forty days, one hundred and 
nine quarts of flies were destroyed, and bounties 
were paid to the amount of ten dollars and ninety 
cents for their dead bodies. But still there was no 
appreciable decrease in the fly population of the vil- 
lage. Flies were everywhere. They were in great 
swarms. If there was any difference, they were 
more numerous than at the beginning of the cam- 
paign to exterminate them. It was puzzling to some 
of the people. The teacher and a local doctor called 
public attention to the fact that no effort was being 
made to destroy the flies' breeding-places. They 
were multiplying by the tens of thousands every day. 
Dirty stables, filthy outhouses, garbage heaps, ma- 
nure piles, and some half-decayed strawstacks in 
the neighborhood were literally teaming with fly 
larvae. The strawstacks were burned, dirty stables 
cleaned out, outhouses cleaned and disinfected, and 
other breeding-places destroyed. In a few weeks the 
community was about free from its pest of flies. To 
try to kill out flies without destroying their breed- 
ing-places is like trying to sweep water out of a 
room while an open hydrant is running on the floor. 



206 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

When such work as killing out flies and mos- 
quitoes and screening homes against them is cham- 
pioned by the teacher, it increases the community's 
respect and appreciation for him. Patrons and pupils 
look upon him as a friend genuinely sympathetic and 
true. It gives the teacher and the school a new 
prestige among them. They will support the school 
with loyalty and devotion because of its immediate 
worth to the basic comforts of life. 

6. Bath Tubs and Sanitary Outhouses for 
Country Homes. — The scarcity of bath tubs in coun- 
try communities is not always due to inability to 
afford them. The homes of many prosperous 
farmers have no such conveniences. The creek for 
the summer and the wash-basin for the winter are 
their only bathing facilities. And many times even 
these are not used as much as they should be. 

In a wealthy agricultural community a teacher 
induced a farmer to put in a new porcelain bath tub. 
An illustrated lecture was given on "Bathing Facili- 
ties and Kitchen Conveniences for Country Homes." 
This was followed by lessons at school on "The 
Value of the Bath Tub" and "The Meaning of 
Cleanliness." At the end of two years fourteen 
homes had bath tubs. Most of them were equipped 
for hot and cold water. These homes had been able 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 2O7 

to afford them for many years, but had given them 
no attention till the teacher called attention to them. 

A fly-proof, sanitary toilet with a cement floor 
was observed at a country home. It was an exact 
copy of the one at school. The proprietor of the 
home said : "Yes, that boy of mine thought the one 
at the schoolhouse was a good thing. Then he and 
I built this one." Now there are seven others just 
like it in use at the country homes in that district. 
They represent emulations of the example set by the 
school. 

7. Lessons in Cleanliness. — At one home the 
face towel was hanging on the inverted broom with 
the wind flapping one of its soiled corners into the 
bucket of drinking water near it. The towel was 
absorbing all sorts of filth and disease the polluted 
broom had picked up from the unclean floor. All 
the members of the family dried their faces on it. 
After dinner the father plucked a straw from the 
broom and used it for a tooth-pick. At another 
home the dishrag was sopping and sour. No member 
of the family would have dared bring it in contact 
with his bare lips. Yet they all ate out of plates 
and with knives and forks over which its filth had 
been spread. Flies came in through the open win- 
dows from the outhouses, pig-pens and manure 



208 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

piles and walked on the food they ate. Blinky, flat- 
tasting milk was served from a vessel that had not 
had its inside seams and crevices thoroughly cleaned 
and sterilized with scalding water and direct sun- 
light for a long while. A common butter dish with 
no butter knife was a place where small bits of saliva 
were exchanged from one mouth to another as the 
butter was cut with individual knives. There was 
no spoon in the meat dish and none in the large 
bowl of stewed fruit. Individual forks were taken 
directly from the mouths of those about the table 
and used in helping their plates. These are just a 
few of the examples of uncleanliness that a lady 
teacher who taught with me in a village school a 
few years ago used in emphasizing the lessons of 
sanitation in her physiology class. 

In that school we had as little laboratory equip- 
ment as schools of four teachers ordinarily have, 
which means practically none at all. But my able 
assistant was an artist in improvising simple experi- 
ments and impressive demonstrations. Here is the 
way in which I observed her simplify the chapter of 
the physiology text on bacteria and communicable 
diseases in a period of five days. A potato was boiled 
in a clean tomato can on top of the school stove. 
Then it was sliced into four pieces with a knife 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 20g 

blade thoroughly sterilized in an alcohol flame in the 
presence of the pupils. Each slice was put on a 
saucer that had been sterilized in boiling water. 
Then one of the slices was inoculated by a boy's 
touching his dirty fingers to it for a few seconds ; 
another one by bringing it in contact with the school- 
room floor; the third one by making two dim 
scratches across it with a pin dipped into stagnant 
water containing some partly decayed hay; and the 
fourth one was not inoculated at all. Then they 
were covered with inverted glass tumblers to ex- 
clude the dust and bacteria from the outside air 
and set away on a dark shelf for four days. 

At the end of four days they were brought be- 
fore the class again. In the meantime the teacher 
had explained how very small spores and disease 
germs are. She explained that they multiply very 
rapidly and that each parent spore on the inoculated 
potato would have a large family in a few days. 
The individual spores and germs were too small to 
see, but the whole families, or colonies, growing from 
them were perfectly visible. When the cultures 
were brought before the class and uncovered, the 
one inoculated by the boy's dirty fingers showed 
thirteen colonies; the one brought in contact with 
the floor, nine colonies; the one inoculated from 



2IO THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

the hay infusion was bristHng with mildew; and 
the one not inoculated at all was still clean and 
fleecy white. The teacher had proved that the boy's 
fingers were dirtier than the school-room floor. She 
gave those pupils a practical glimpse deep down into 
the world of diatoms away out there in a village 
school without the aid of a high-priced microscope. 
These simple, forceful lessons were very visibly re- 
flected in their habits and practises of cleanliness 
in school and at home. 

Some teachers teach to get practical results. 
Their purpose is to improve the pupils' habits of 
thinking and living. They are real teachers. Others 
are nothing more than cheap conventional drill- 
masters preparing pupils for but little else than to 
pass to the grade next above. Just how ridiculous 
the average stereotyped free school of to-day will be 
in the eyes of the historian one hundred years hence, 
I should like to know. 

THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. Account for the health of city children being 
better than the health of country children. Give a 
summary of the findings of the health survey among 
the rural schools of Orange County, Virginia. 

2. Has the health of your pupils been inspected by 
a competent physician this year? Are any of them 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 211 

suffering from adenoids, carious teeth, or diseased 
tonsils? Have you procured a set of Snellen's cards 
from an oculist and tested the eyesight of all your pu- 
pils? Have you prevailed on the parents of the de- 
fective children in your school to have them given 
medical treatment? Does your county have a public 
health nurse? 

3. Why is a ration that is unwholesome and in- 
complete sometimes more expensive than a ration that 
is palatable and well-balanced ? What are some of the 
physical evidences of malnutrition among children? 
Show how farmers sometimes lose money by feeding 
their live stock incomplete rations. Can you give a 
formula for a balanced ration for a flock of laying 
hens? What is some of the most economical poultry 
feed produced in the locality where you reside ? 

4. Have you any pupils who are flat-chested and 
weakly? Have you made a spirometer as outlined in 
this chapter and tested the capacities of their lungs? 
Have you performed the lime-water test for carbon 
dioxide in the presence of your physiology class? 

5. What per cent, of the homes in your school dis- 
trict have screens? Why is it so necessary to screen 
chimney flues during the summer months in malarial 
districts? (Screen against anopheles mosquitoes with 
No. 16 screen wire ; i. e., screens with sixteen wires to 
the inch.) Mosquitoes incubate in water. They like 
sluggish, standing water best. Are there any such 
breeding-places for mosquitoes near your school or 
near any of the homes from which your pupils come? 
If so, could any of them be successfully drained ? Ar- 
tificial ponds for stock water sometimes get infested 
with "wiggletails." They can be killed out by placing 



212 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

cans of dripping oil so the oil will spread over the 
surface of the water. (Crude petroleum is the least 
expensive oil to use for that purpose.) Why is trap- 
ping flies of little use unless their breeding-places are 
destroyed? Name all the places you can where flies 
breed. 

6. Do all the well-to-do farmers where you teach 
have bath tubs in their homes ? If not, why not ? Are 
the toilets at your school fly-proof and sanitary? 

7. Have you ever seen people eat food out of plates 
that were washed with sour dishrags? Is it possible 
for disease to be communicated from mouth to mouth 
through the medium of a common butter dish that has 
no knife in it? Do you ever give your pupils lessons 
on good table manners? What are some of the de- 
vices you have used for impressing the lessons of home 
sanitation and personal cleanliness this year? 

REFERENCES 

Broadhurst, Home and Community Hygiene, Lippin- 
cott Company, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Lowry, The Home Nurse, Forbes and Company, 
Chicago, 111. 

MacNutt, Manual for Health Officers, John Wiley 
and Sons, New York. 

Crissey, The Story of Foods, Rand McNally and 
Company, Chicago, 111. 

Ehlers and Lennert, Rural Home Sanitation, Bul- 
letin of the Texas State Board of Health, Austin, Tex. 

Ehlers, A Sanitary Toilet Suitable for Rural Dis- 
tricts and How to Build It, Texas State Board of 
Health, Austin, Texas. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 2I3 

U. S. Public Health Bulletins, Bureau of Public 
Health, Treasury Department, Washington, D. C. 

Some Aspects of Malarial Control through Mos- 
quito Eradication, by C. W. Metz. (Reprint Public 
Plealth Reports, No. 500, Jan. 31, 1920.) 

Is Your Community Fit? (Reprint from Public 
Health Reports, No. 517, Apr. 25, 1919.) 

The Road to Health. (Keep Well Series No. i.) 

Adenoids. (Keep Well Series No. 2.) 

How to Avoid Tuberculosis. (Keep Well Series^ 
No. 3.) 

Uncle Sam's Guide to Health. A selected list of 
popular health articles. (Miscellaneous publications 
No. 20.) 

Mental Hygiene Leaflets for Teachers. (Reprint 
for Public Health Reports, No. 518, Apr. 25, 1919.) 

A High-School Course in Physiology in Which the 
Facts of Sex Are Taught. (V. D. Bulletin No. 50.) 

Some Observations on Mental Defectiveness and 
Mental Retardation, by Walter L. Treadwell. (Re- 
print from Public Health Reports, No. 514, Apr. 11, 
1919.) 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Rural School Museum 

I. How the Material for a Museum Was Col- 
lected by a Country Teacher — One Monday morn- 
ing a teacher brought before her room a very 
pleasing curio. She held it up in plain view of the 
children and told them an interesting story about 
it. Then she said : "Children, we are going to make 
this curio week. A valuable curio can be found 
in almost every home. We can make good use of 
these curios in our work at school. I want you to 
collect as many of them as you can and bring them 
to me. Do not bring them to-morrow. But to- 
morrow each of you may tell what you think you 
can bring." 

On Tuesday morning the teacher exhibited 
another curio to the room, gave its history and 
heard short reports from several pupils on what 
they could contribute to the curio collection. The 
morning exercises were occupied in a similar way 
Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday morning 
she announced that the curios collected during the 
week might be brought to school the next day. 

214 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 215 

The following is a partial list of what appeared at 
the teacher's desk on Friday morning: two swords 
that saw service in the Civil War ; one bayonet ; one 
Bowie knife; an Indian scalp; one small vase 
from Palestine; quite a collection of sea vShells; 
shark's teeth, and other marine specimens ; a human 
skull ; some Indian crockery ; and quite a number of 
flint arrowheads and spearheads. In fact, the 
teacher said: "My desk was simply buried with in- 
teresting relics. You could not have carried them 
away in a wheelbarrow at one full load. My next 
task was to classify the material and put it away 
on the shelves. And it taught me this lesson: Not 
to allow any pupil to bring more than two speci- 
mens in any one week while we were making the 
rest of our collection." 

The next week was fossil week. On Monday 
morning the teacher brought before the room a 
petrified shell found on a hillside near the school- 
house and told what it was and how it came to be 
there. On Tuesday morning she exhibited some 
petrified shark's teeth found in the same locality. 
The following Friday morning there were brought 
to the teacher's desk : one mammoth's tooth ; numer- 
ous petrified marine shells; specimens of petrified 
wood; bits of bituminous coal, anthracite coal and 



2l6 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SC/jOOL 

lignite; shales from a coal mine sixty miles away 
beautifully imprinted with fern leaves that grew 
many thousands of years ago; and some pieces of 
bog iron-ore bearing clear outlines of the leaves of 
forest trees that flourished when Earth was much 
younger than it is to-day. 

The third week was insect week. The teacher 
brought two insects before the class — a Colorado 
potato beetle and a monarch butterfly. She took 
ten minutes to tell of the habits and life-history of 
each. Then she immersed them in a small quantity 
of gasoline, explaining that she used this method of 
killing them to avoid mutilating and disfiguring 
their bodies. Next she mounted them on pieces of 
cardboard she had brought for that purpose and set 
them away to dry. On the following Friday morn- 
ing more than fifty mounted specimens were 
brought to her desk. Four cigar boxes were 
required to accommodate them. Some moth balls 
were placed in each box to keep the parasites away, 
and they were put on the museum shelves to become 
part of the permanent equipment of the school. 

In like manner, one week was devoted to collect- 
ing and mounting native wild flowers; another to 
the seeds of harmful weeds; and a week each to 
native wild grasses, wild fruits and nuts, the leaves 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 2iy 

and stems of domesticated plants, and the different 
field crops in the neighborhood. 

2. The Use of the Museum. — In commenting 
on her school equipment the teacher said: ''I could 
hardly get along without the museum. It helps 
me simplify so many of the lessons called for in the 
course of study. This is especially true with the 
subjects of physical geography, physiology, nature 
study and English composition. Both in assigning 
lessons and in teaching them, concrete material 
from the shelves of the museum is of invaluable 
assistance in making them interesting and attrac- 
tive. When I want an original English composition, 
I go to the museum, select my subject, hold it up 
before my pupils, and familiarize them with it. 
Then they are not at a loss for something to write 
about." 

Just a few miles from this place was another 
school taught by a very pretty girl whom, for con- 
venience, we shall call Catherine. I had visited her 
school and given her pupils the same tests in arith- 
metic, reading, spelling and English composition 
that I had given in the school with the museum. In 
commenting on the grades made by these pupils the 
teacher of the first school made a statement that I 
think is full of educational merit. She said: "My 



2l8 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

pupils have passed better tests in original compo- 
sition writing than Catherine's pupils simply because 
they have more to write about. Their minds have 
richer contents. They have seen, touched, handled 
and mastered so many of the things about which 
I have taught them. But Catherine's pupils have 
merely heard of a good many things. That is all. 
Their minds are filled with inaccurate imaginary 
conceptions of too many things they have never 
seen." 

What was the difference between these two 
girls? One was a school-teacher, the other a 
pretty girl teaching school; one was a community 
leader, the other a boarder in the community; one 
was facing problems squarely and meeting them in 
her own original, practical way, the other applying 
the formal practises of the school-room just as she 
had inherited them from the teachers who taught 
her; one had caught the community-service idea in 
education, the other followed the letter of the text- 
book and was blind to most of the vital needs of 
the people she had pledged herself to serve. 

Both from experience as a country teacher my- 
self and from what I have observed among country 
schools taught by others, I am taking this occasion 
to recommend the museum as an essential part of 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 2ig 

the equipment of every up-to-date rural school. 
Country children must be brought into closer 
and more intelligent acquaintance with the common- 
place things about them. They need to know more 
about things in the country. The wild flowers, 
busy insects, growing field crops, and even the dead 
fossils embedded in the rocks by the roadside are 
pregnant with truth and beauty for all who have 
an intelligent appreciation of them. Concrete, 
illustrative material is indispensable to the success- 
ful initiation of the child into the beautiful mysteries 
of natural science. The school museum offers the 
best means of making this material convenient and 
available for use in the class-room. 

3. The Essentials of a Rural-School Museum. 
— Elaborate physical equipment is not so necessary 
for teaching elementary science if the teacher knows 
how to organize and use the material for instruction 
that nature has everywhere so generously provided. 
The keys that unlock the doors to scientific truth 
are in abundance on every country hillside, in the 
meadow, by the brook, at the mill, in the poultry 
yard, at the dairy barn, and at every other point in 
our physical environment, if teachers only knew 
better how to recognize them and use them intelli- 
gently. Concrete, illustrative material taken fresh 



220 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

from the fold of nature is often preferable to highly 
polished pieces of factory-made apparatus. High- 
priced, complex apparatus sometimes distracts the 
mind of the elementary student and confuses facts 
with appearances. Much home-made equipment is 
highly desirable in rural and village schools. The 
older boys will make many pieces of simple appara- 
tus, and the pupils of all ages will assist in collect- 
ing such a museum as herewith outlined if the 
teacher will only explain what is wanted and how it 
is to be used. Such equipment is inexpensive, and 
the work of making and collecting it is highly 
educative. 

The first equipment needed is a place to put 
things while they are not in use. Mice and dust will 
injure many valuable specimens if a closed case is 
not provided for them. All specimens should be 
mounted, labeled and arranged so that they may be 
easily found when wanted. As soon as the teacher 
has decided on the topics to be included in the year's 
work, she should make notes of all the material 
needed and begin collecting accordingly. Much of 
the material will have to be collected at the season 
when it is available and preserved for future use. 
The pupils will do most of the work if the teacher 
will lead the way. The following is a partial list 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 221 

of the material that can be collected in almost any 
country community: 

Common Insects. — In this collection it is well to 
include mounted specimens of butterflies, moths, 
beetles, spiders, grasshoppers, dragon-flies, bees and 
wasps. Secure the eggs, larvae and complete life- 
history of as many of the insects as possible that 
are injurious to man, farm animals, gardens, 
orchards and field crops. These should include 
flies, mosquitoes, cattle ticks, blue bugs, squash 
bugs, chinch bugs, sphinx moths, coddling moths, 
borers, Colorado potato beetles, green bugs, boll- 
weevils, granary weevils. Where possible, secure 
samples of the destruction done by these insects. 
Both the larval and the adult forms of such speci- 
mens as grubworms, cutworms and wireworms 
should be included. (Put captured insects in gas- 
oline to kill them.) Preserve the larval forms in 
five per cent, formaline solution. Mount the adult 
specimens on pins and dry. Put them in closed 
cigar boxes and fumigate occasionally with carbon 
bisulphide or with moth balls to keep parasites from 
destroying them. (See Farmer's Bulletin No. 606, 
Collection and Preservation of Insects and Other 
Material for Use in the Study of Agriculture, U, S. 
Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.) 



222 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Small Animals — The pelts, skulls and skeletons 
of many small animals can be easily obtained. The 
schoolboys will be glad to assist in making a col- 
lection of skulls of birds, rodents and carniverous 
and herbiverous animals. This might include the 
skull of the hawk, crow, pigeon, partridge, squirrel, 
rat, rabbit, cat, dog, sheep and goat. Treat all pelts 
of animals with a dilute solution of corrosive sub- 
limate to keep the parasites from injuring them. 
(To remove the flesh from the skeleton of an ani- 
mal, skin the carcass and remove the viscera and 
larger muscles with a knife. Then boil it in a soapy 
solution till the remaining flesh is removed. In the 
case of small animals such as mice, sparrows or 
toads, skin them and place the carcasses under a 
wire gauze in a "farmer ant" bed for a few days. 
The ants will remove the rest of the flesh.) 

Grasses and Weeds. — Tied in small uniform 
bundles : rescue grass, fox tail, crab-grass, Bermuda, 
wild millet, mesquite, gramma grass, carpet grass, 
Johnson grass, Soudan grass, and other varieties. 

Weeds and weed seed : cocklebur, jimpson, 
tumble-weed, thistle, nettles, bitter-weed, blue-weed, 
sunflower, tie vines, etc. 

Legumes. — Perennials : mesquite, coffee bean, 
locust, cat claw, and other varieties. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 223 

Annuals: Alfalfa, sweet clover, bur clover, 
vetches, soy-beans, velvet beans, field peas, peanuts 
with vine, etc. Secure specimens of vetch and al- 
falfa that show bacterial nodules adhering to roots. 

Cereals. — Corn: Ears of different types: dent 
type, flint type, soft corn, sweet corn and popcorn. 
Ears showing proportion of corn to cob, space be- 
tween rows, straight rows, well-filled types, 
uniformity of circumference. Ideal stalk with ear, 
specimens of corn smut, corn products, etc. 

Wheat: Selected heads of native varieties. Mill 
products in small bottles : screenings, wheat ready 
to grind, middlings, bran, entire wheat flour. 

Oats: Types of heads: spreading and side. 
Varieties: white, black, red, gray. Smutty heads 
with treatment for same. 

Barley : Selected heads of bearded and beardless 
types, two-row and six-row types. 

Grain Sorghums: Selected heads of milo, kafir 
and feterita. 

Cotton and Cotton Products. — Bolls, stalks, 
leaves and samples of fibers from different varie- 
ties. Fibers of different lengths mounted side by 
side. Samples of the standard grades of cotton. 
Cotton fiber products. Cotton-seed products: oil, 
cake, meal, hulls. 



224 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Fruits and Vegetables. — Collect and preserve 
tubers, fruits and vegetables in glass jars in two 
per cent, formaline solution. Make an extensive 
collection of southern nuts. Lay special emphasis 
on the pecan by securing as many varieties as pos- 
sible. Collect and label small quantities of seed 
from all the fruits and vegetables grown in the 
locality. 

The Dairy.— Pictures and models of ideal dairy 
farms and sanitary appliances for handling milk and 
other dairy products. Preserved specimens of cot- 
tage cheese, American cheese and Swiss cheese. 
Petri dishes with colonies of bacteria from impure 
milk, cow-hairs and manure particles. If the Petri 
dishes can not be had conveniently, collect pictures 
of different culture media in which bacterial colonies 
have been grown. 

Rations for Farm Animals Secure a few large- 
size glass test-tubes from a chemistry laboratory. 
Make a collection of all the available kinds of stock 
feed that are locally produced: hay, fodder, silage, 
wheat bran, cotton-seed meal, cotton-seed hulls, 
Indian corn and grain sorghums. Get the formulae 
from text-books or from government bulletins for 
balanced rations for beef cattle, laying hens, fatten- 
ing hogs and other farm animals. Fill test-tubes 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 225 

according to these formulas. Keep the different 
feeds in the test-tubes separated from one another 
by partitions made of thin paper wads so that the 
proportion of each feed required in the ration can 
be seen. Assign tubes to their proper place in the 
school museum so they will be ready for illustrative 
use when needed. 

Woods of Orchard and Forest Trees Speci- 
mens of wood that have been injured by fungous 
diseases, borers and mistletoe. Specimens of wood 
from all the local forest trees sawed and polished so 
as to show both the longitudinal and the cross sec- 
tions. {Forestry in Nature, Farmer's Bulletin No. 
468, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Wash- 
ington, D. C.) 

Geological Fossils. — Many of the sand and 
limestone strata in the South are very rich in marine 
fossils. Shark's teeth and crocodile teeth, and 
various kinds of fossilized marine shells can be found 
in great abundance in many localities. The teeth, 
tusks and bones of the mammoth and other extinct 
land animals are quite common in many parts of 
Texas. The children and patrons of the school 
will take great interest in collecting these specimens 
and bringing them to the schoolhouse when 
encouraged to do so. As many different kinds of 



226 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

native ores and stones as possible should also be 
gathered and brought to the school museum. 

Historical Relics. — Stone hatchets, stone arrow- 
heads, pipes, pottery, moccasins and other Indian 
reHcs. Coins, postage stamps, curios, ancient doc- 
uments, colonial household articles and the like 
might very appropriately fall in this collection. 

Soils and Fertilizers. — Samples of as many dif- 
ferent kinds of soils and commercial fertilizers as 
can be obtained. 

Pictures. — Collect pictures of all the different 
kinds and types of farm animals. Good pictures of 
model farms, farm conveniences, dairy barns, and 
the like should be saved for the school. Many 
valuable pictures can be taken from the Country 
Gentleman, Farm and Ranch and other farm papers. 
All good pictures bearing on any of the school sub- 
jects should be saved and put where they can be 
found when needed. 



CHAPTER XIV 
A Standard Rural School 

I. What Is a Standard School? — In the indus- 
trial world, the standardization of machines and the 
consequent standardization of products have 
wrought miracles in the efficiency and economy of 
production. But before there could be a standard- 
ization of products, the machines employed in pro- 
duction had first to be standardized. For instance, 
Nut No. 15 on the new Liberty Motor is just like 
Nut No. 15 on every other Liberty Motor. It will 
fit and fill the function for which it was intended 
on any of them. But this convenience and economy 
is possible only as the result of machines designed 
to turn out uniform parts. 

This same principle has been carried into the 
school business. The idea is that, before the sixth- 
grade pupil can hold his own and stand on equal 
terms with sixth-grade pupils from any other school, 
there must first be a standardization of teachers, 
courses of study, equipment and working machinery 
in the entire school system. Within certain flex- 
ible limitations this is all good and well. But 
227 



228 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

standards that are too rigid and unyielding lead to 
grave injustices in education, for not all children 
have the same tastes and endowments, just as square 
pegs do not fit into round holes. Yet, it would be 
exceedingly difficult to conduct a system of public 
schools without some prescribed requirements. 

Without standards, comparisons are impossible. 
One of the best means of getting a school to im- 
prove itself is by comparing it with other schools 
similarly environed. Numerous score-cards have 
been devised for this purpose during recent years. 
But a perfect score-card is an impossibility. Some 
of the factors in a school, such as the personality 
of the teacher and the spirit of the pupils, are qual- 
itative and can not be measured by quantitative 
standards. 

Above all other things, a practical score-card for 
a country school must be definite and concrete. It 
will fail in its purpose if its rubrics are abstract and 
general. Country children, country-school trustees, 
and most country teachers do the greater amount 
of their thinking in concrete terms. Their conver- 
sations are usually about tangible objects in their 
environment. They are not concerned so much 
about theories, concepts and principles as with 
things they can see and touch. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 229 

The score-card herewith submitted will, no 
doubt, receive its full share of criticism from the 
educational theorist. In fact, its imperfections are 
so numerous that it will be positively painful to the 
astute idealist. But for the teacher on the job deal- 
ing with actual conditions and honestly endeavoring 
to improve them, I trust that it will be of some 
practical service. 

The numerical values assigned to each of the 
rubrics are arbitrary and subject to any change that 
the teacher or the superintendent may see fit to 
make. In fact, this score-card is merely a sugges- 
tive one, inviting revision and adaptation to the 
special needs of any rural locality. 

Score-card for a Rural School 
(A total of 1,000 points is a lOO per cent, school) 

I. Sanitation and Hygiene: 

Water supply: well, cistern, spring or creek 
(well II points, cistern 9 points, spring 2 
points, creek o points) 11 

Well at schoolhouse or hydrant in school yard 8 

Pump in well ( Scores same for running hydrant 
water) 8 

Drinking facilities : bubbling fountains, 12 



230 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

points; hydrants and individual cups, 10 
points ; individual cups and common bucket, 2 
points; common cup and common bucket, o 

points 12 

Two clean, fly-proof, sanitary toilets, not less 

than thirty yards apart and not defaced. ... 12 
Jacketed stoves, properly installed, and neatly 

poHshed 11 

Thermometer 3 

Clean floors 6 

Clean walls and clean furniture 6 

Dustless crayon 3 

Oiled dust cloth 3 

Slate or hyloplate blackboard with chalk trough 

and dustless erasers 6 

Sweeping compound or oiled floors 6 

Window space equal to one-sixth of floor space 8 
Windows grouped and seats arranged so light 

does not come directly into pupils' eyes 5 

Windows and doors screened 5 

Window shades, adjustable from the top 5 

Sanitary cloak-rooms 4 

Bathing facilities : lavoratories, wash basins, 

individual towels and mirror 8 

Place for eating lunches 4 

Sanitary shelves for lunch baskets 4 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 23 1 

Shoe scrapers and rugs for cleaning shoes .... 4 



Total 142 

II. Exterior Equipment: 

Yard neatly fenced, having good gates or stiles 14 

Yard clean and attractive 14 

Trees, flowers, shrubs and walks 14 

Seats in shade 8 

Place to eat lunches : arbor 8 

As much as four acres of land 11 

Grounds well drained 11 

Playground coated with sod, sand or gravel so 

as to prevent mud during rain 14 

School garden 14 

Baseball court 8 

Tennis court 8 

Basketball court 8 

Swings, seesaws, horizontal bars, flag-pole and 

sand pile 11 

Total 143 

III. Buildings: 

Wood, stone, stucco, or brick (wood, 9 points. 

Stone, stucco or brick, 14 points) 14 

In good repair (if wood, well painted) 11 



232 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

Attractive 11 

Window-panes clean and not broken 15 

Windows properly grouped 15 

Main light on left of pupils 15 

No light in front of pupils 15 

Clean, well-ventilated cloak-rooms 15 

Sixteen square feet or more of floor space per 

child 15 

Teacher's home 17 



Total 143 

IV. Interior Equipment: 

Single desks of three sizes (all desks in each row 

of the same size) 12 

Teacher's desk and chair 11 

Clock 7 

Twenty-five linear feet of hyloplate blackboard, 
properly installed, with good chalk rail in 

each room 12 

Dictionaries, maps, globes and charts 12 

Laboratory : elementary equipment for teaching 
agriculture, domestic science and manual 

training 1 1 

Museum : collections of seeds, plants, fossils, etc. 12 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 233 

Library worth fifty dollars or more in good 

book-case 1 1 

Good collection of government bulletins lo 

Auditorium equipped with stage and curtain. . . lo 

Piano or Victrola 1 1 

Clean paper on walls or walls properly tinted . . 8 

Pot flowers and pictures 8 

Gas or electric lights for auditorium 8 

Total 143 

V. Extension Activities : 

Parent-teacher's association 22 

Well executed home project work 17 

Young people's reading circle 17 

Musical organization 17 

Literary society 15 

Public lectures 15 

Boys' and girls' industrial clubs 19 

School exhibits and community fairs 21 

Total 143 

VI. Teachers : 

All teachers holding first-grade certificates or 
certificates of higher grade 28 



234 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

All teachers from state normal schools or first- 
class colleges 28 

No teacher with less than three years of teach- 
ing experience 28 

All teachers that have been employed in same 
school for three years or more 28 

No teacher with more than forty pupils in schools 
with two or more teachers, and not more than 
twenty-five pupils in schools with only one 
teacher 28 

Total 140 

VII. Character and Scope of Work: 

Well-adjusted daily program 13 

Open with music 13 

Following state course of study 13 

Supplementary readers 13 

Classes in agriculture 13 

Domestic science in school 13 

Manual training 13 

School term of eight months or more 13 

Daily attendance of not less than 85 per cent, of 

all pupils actually enrolled in school 13 

Plays and games well taught and well supervised 13 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 235 

Attitude of pupils : helpfulness, confidence, co- 
operation 14 



Total 



144 



THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. In a community that is trying to improve its 
schools, what would be the effect upon the pupils, pa- 
trons and trustees if the principal of the school should 
make use of a score-card and publish the grades 
scored by the school at the end of each month? Do 
you know of a community that is perfectly satisfied 
with the physical equipment of its schools? Would 
such a community be satisfied if it were fully conscious 
of how it compares with some of its more enterprising 
neighbors ? 

2. Would it be well for a county superintendent to 
score every school he visits and leave duplicate copies 
of the scores made with the trustees and teachers ? 



CHAPTER XV 
Larger School Units in the Country 

1. The One-Teacher School. — We have the 
one-teacher school. It has been a necessity. It 
always will be. There are three conditions justify- 
ing its existence : ( i ) sparsely settled communities, 
(2) isolated districts in river bends and enclosed 
mountain valleys, (3) districts having central high 
schools with small schools for little children of the 
lower grades. The small school is not necessarily 
a poor school. But under conditions other than 
those mentioned, the small school has long since 
outlived its greatest usefulness. 

2. The Poor Attendance in Small Country 
Schools. — The commonest of all the objections 
against consolidation is that it removes schools so 
far from some homes that not all the children of 
school age can attend. At first thought, this appears 
to be a valid reason, but upon investigation it does 
not prove so. The facts are quite to the contrary. 
Consolidation tends to improve attendance. Four 
years ago it was found in one hundred cases of 
consolidation in nineteen Texas counties that ninety- 

236 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 237 

seven per cent, showed an increase in attendance, 
and seventy-seven per cent, reported better teaching. 
The New Dixon Consohdated School in ColHn 
County, as I found it, while conducting a rural 
school survey there in 19 14, is a good example. It 
was formed by the union of Old Dixon with the 
Hopewell School and two-thirds of the Richards 
District. The average daily attendance of all the 
pupils enrolled in these three one-room schools the 
year before the consolidation was forty-five and 
six-tenths per cent. The average daily attend- 
ance of the pupils enrolled in the new consoli- 
dated school the next year was sixty-five and six- 
tenths per cent. It has been my observation that 
pupils do not mind a reasonably long distance if 
there is an attractive school at the other end of 
the road. 

3. The Cost of Small Schools In Collin 

County I found from the teachers' annual reports 
that the per capita cost on daily attendance for 
twenty-six one-room country schools was thirty- 
one and two-tenths per cent, higher than the 
per capita cost on daily attendance for McKinney, 
the county-seat town. This difference in cost was 
due to the difference in attendance. The smaller 
the daily attendance, the greater the per capita cost 



2^8 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

for those who do attend. But this wastefulness of 
finance, which is a quantitative thing that can be 
easily measured, is possibly not so great as the waste 
of brain power, which can not be measured. There 
is a great educational waste as well as a great fi- 
nancial waste in the poorly attended, poorly taught, 
small school. 

Advocates of consolidation sometimes hazard 
the statement that consolidation reduces the total 
cost of school maintenance. That is not necessarily 
true, though it does usually reduce the daily 
cost per pupil through increased attendance. Its 
economy does not lie in the expenditure of less 
money. It lies in the expenditure of more money 
to better advantage. It gives more for each dollar 
invested. 

4. The Meaning of Consolidation — Consoli- 
dation brings to pupils the inspiration that increased 
numbers give. It widens acquaintanceship, stim- 
ulates competition, develops school loyalty, encour- 
ages interscholastic rivalry and makes way for such 
school and community activities as organized 
athletics, debating teams, dramatic clubs and the 
like. It enjoys better trained teachers, better equip- 
ment, longer class periods and fewer grades to the 
teacher than are possible without consolidation. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 239 

Consolidation brings together into one school unit 
an aggregation of wealth sufficiently large to guar- 
antee adequate school finances. This makes it 
possible to have better buildings, better libraries and 
better general equipment. 

5. A Square Deal for the Country Child. — 
Country boys and girls have not had as good oppor- 
tunities as city children. High-school privileges 
have been denied to most of them. This result has 
been due to teachers that are immature and not prop- 
erly trained, to short school terms, to buildings that 
are poor, insanitary and ill-equipped, to inadequate 
finances and poor supervision, and to an effort to 
imitate what town schools are doing. 

The twentieth-century country school with more 
teachers and better equipment is beginning to resent 
the idea of being a poor example of a town school. 
It is departing from urban ideals and developing 
character and individuality of its own. It is stand- 
ing for more than the mere advancement of children 
through a graded course. It is not content with 
dealing only with that portion of education that is 
locked up in the mysteries of books. Its deepest 
concern is the enrichment of rural attractions and 
the preparation of people to live happily and use- 
fully in the midst of rural surroundings. 



240 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

6. How to Make a Consolidation. — Since I 
began this chapter a woman from DeWitt County 
called and asked me how I would manage the con- 
solidating of some schools in which she was inter- 
ested down there. The best that I could do for her, 
however, was to tell her that I did not know. I 
have given assistance in effecting many consolida- 
tions in Texas, but I have never seen any two cases 
exactly alike or that could be handled by the same 
methods. Each case is in a class to itself, requir- 
ing the deftest sort of manipulation. For this 
reason, it is difficult to lay down any very general 
rules. 

Much always depends on how the campaign is 
launched and who takes the lead in it. One legiti- 
mate question always is. Who is the most logical and 
most acceptable person or group of persons to steer 
the movement in this community ? With the wrong 
person in the lead, defeat is usually inevitable. The 
manner of launching a campaign must always be 
determined by local conditions. The method em- 
ployed in the case mentioned in the second chapter 
of this book was, in all probability, the very best 
one that could have been hit upon for uniting those 
five small schools. Under other conditions, it 
might be thoroughly impractical. 



THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 24I 

Again, I have always found it well to avoid the 
use of the word "consolidate" as much as possible. 
In fact, I have never used it in my life in discussing 
better schools with an audience or with a committee 
where a case of enlarging a school district was being 
considered. It is a word that has been overworked, 
and one that often arouses resentment, whereas the 
same idea set forth in other terms would be perfectly 
acceptable. The safest guides for conducting a 
campaign for the union of two or more school dis- 
tricts into one are judicious common sense, tact, 
diplomacy and a sound knowledge of human nature. 



THOUGHT QUESTIONS 

1. State the three reasons justifying the existence 
of the one-room school. 

2. Account for the poor attendance in most of the 
small country schools. Why does consolidation usu- 
ally improve attendance? 

3. A man once said: "The small, poorly-attended 
school in the country is the most expensive institution 
in our educational system." Upon what grounds 
might this .statement be defended? Show that the 
waste of brain power is the greatest waste sustained 
by the small, poorly-taught country school. Show 
that the economy of consolidation does not lie in the 
expenditure of less money, but in the expenditure of 
more money to better advantage. 



242 THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY RURAL SCHOOL 

4. State ten advantages the consolidated school has 
over the one-teacher school. 

5. Show that country children have poorer school 
opportunities than city children. Many country 
schools are modeled after town schools. They are 
poor examples of town schools moved to the country. 
Wherein does the fallacy of this practise lie? Why 
must the country school have character and individ- 
uality of its own in order to meet country needs ? 

6. Why is it so difficult to lay down a code of 
rules by which a county superintendent might be 
guided in the work of rural-school consolidation? 
Why is it often best not to use the term "consolidate" ? 
Name some types of persons who would be unde- 
sirable as local leaders in a school-consolidation 
movement. 

REFERENCES 

Foght, The American Rural School, Macmillan 
Company, New York. 

Kern, Among Rural Schools, pages 240-281, Ginn 
& Co., Boston. 

THE END 



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